FROM THE CHIEF HISTORIAN BORIS CHERTOK'S Rockets and ...

NASA HISTORY DIVISION 

Office of External Relations 

volume 26, number 2 second quarter 2009 

From 

the ChieF 

historian 

This is my last newsletter as the National 

Aeronautics and Space Administration 

(NASA) Chief Historian. Having reached the 

canonical 30 years of federal government ser - 

vice, I will be retiring shortly after the Apollo 

11 40th anniversary, returning to full -time 

research and writing. It has been an honor to 

serve, especially during the 50th -anniversary 

celebrations, as historian for the world’s pre - 

mier agency for exploration. 

A look back at our newsletters after my arrival 

almost six years ago indicates that we have 

achieved many of the goals we set for our - 

selves at that time. I am particularly proud of 

the four conferences we have sponsored and 

their proceedings: Critical Issues in the History 

of Spaceflight, Societal Impact of Spaceflight, 

Remembering the Space Age, and NASA ’s First 

50 Years. I believe these will stand the test 

of time, as well as the Risk and Exploration 

volume we published as part of the memorable 

Administrator’s Symposium on that subject 

in Monterey, California, in 2004. All of these 

volumes can be found online at http://www. 

history.nasa.gov/series95.html. 

At the same time, we have moved ahead 

on numerous book projects, including our 

f lagship series: volumes 6 and 7 of John 

Logsdon’s Exploring the Unknown (with one 

more to come), the frst 3 of the 4 volumes of 

Boris Chertok’s memoirs Rockets and People 

(edited by Asif Siddiqi), and volumes 2 and 

3 of Jim Hansen’s The Wind and Beyond. We 

have updated our standard series of refer - 

ence works, including the Historical Data 

continued on page 4 

Boris Chertok’s 

Rockets and PeoPle 

By Asif A. Siddiqi, visiting scholar, Space, Policy, and Society 

Research Group, Massachusetts Institute of Technology 

For those interested in the history of Russian space exploration, and more 

broadly in the history of space exploration during the Cold War, the mem 

oirs of Boris Chertok provide a striking and unique perspective. Chertok 

is one of those rare actors in history who not only played a critical role 

in the program but has been able to convey with grace and eloquence his 

experiences to the broader public. For over 40 years, Chertok worked at 

the senior-most levels of the famous “OKB-1” design bureau, which in its 

present incarnation as the Energiya Rocket-Space Corporation continues 

to play a leading role in the Russian human spacefight program. 

Chertok began his career as an electrician in 1930 at an aviation factory 

near Moscow. Thirty years later, he was one of the senior designers in 

charge of the Soviet Union’s crowning achievement as a space power: the 

launch of Yuriy Gagarin, the world’s frst space voyager. The experiences 

in this issue: 

continued on next page 

From the Chief Historian 1 

Boris Chertok’s Rockets and People 1 

News from Headquarters and the Centers 5 

Recent Publications 12 

Online Resources 21 

Historic Preservation News 22 

Other News in Aerospace History 26 

Upcoming Meetings 27 

Obituaries 28 

An Evening with Dr. Abdul Kalam 

Lunar Orbiter Image Rescue 

46 

and the NASA Headquarters History Offce 47 

Apollo 40th-Anniversary Events 49 

NASA History Program Review 50 

2009 NASA History Award Goes to Erik M. Conway 

Photos from the NASA History Program Review, 

51 

Held at NASA Ames, 28–30 April 2009 52

nasa history division 

2 

Boris Chertok’s Rockets and People (continued) 

of Chertok’s 60-year-long career, punctuated by the extraordinary accomplishments 

of both Sputnik and Gagarin and then continuing to the many successes and failures 

of the Soviet space program, constitute the core of his memoirs, Rockets and People. 

In these four volumes, Academician Chertok not only describes and remembers, but 

also elicits and extracts profound insights from an epic story about a society’s quest 

to explore the cosmos. 

Chertok began writing his memoirs in the early 1990s, around the time of the collapse 

of the Soviet Union, when it was fnally possible to speak frankly and without 

fear about Soviet history. Originally, he had only intended to write about his experiences 

from the postwar years in one volume, at the most two. Readers responded 

so positively to the frst volume, Rakety i lyudi (Rockets and People), published in 

1994, that Chertok continued to write, eventually producing three more substantial 

volumes, published in 1996, 1997, and 1999, covering the entire history of the Soviet 

missile and space programs. 1 

My initial interest in the memoirs was purely historical: I was fascinated by the 

wealth of technical arcana in the books, specifcally projects and concepts that 

had remained hidden throughout much of the Cold War. Those interested in dates, 

statistics, and the “nuts and bolts” of history found much that was useful in these 

pages. As I continued to read, however, I became engrossed by the overall rhythm 

of Academician Chertok’s narrative, which gave voice and humanity to a story 

ostensibly about mathematics and technology. In his writings, I found a richness 

that had been nearly absent in most of the disembodied, clinical, and often speculative 

writing by westerners studying the Soviet space program. Because of Chertok’s 

storytelling skills, his memoir was a mucheeded corrective to the outdated western 

view of Soviet space achievements as a mishmash of propaganda, self-delusion, and 

Cold War rhetoric. In Chertok’s story, we meet real people with real dreams who 

achieved extraordinary successes under very diffcult conditions. 

Because of the importance of Academician Chertok’s memoirs, I did not hesitate 

when the then-acting Chief of the NASA History Division, Stephen Garber, invited 

me to serve as project editor for the English-language version. Jesco von Puttkamer 

at NASA Headquarters (HQ) served as the guiding spirit behind the entire project. 

He was instrumental in setting up the arrangements for cooperation between the 

two parties; without his passion and enthusiasm for bringing Chertok’s writings to 

a broader audience, this endeavor might not have gone beyond conception. Once 

the project was initiated, I was excited to learn that Academician Chertok would be 

providing entirely new chapters for most of the four volumes, updated and corrected 

from the original Russian-language editions. In that sense, these English-language 

versions are the most updated and fnal versions of Chertok’s memoirs. 

Early this coming summer, the NASA History Division is about to issue the third 

volume of the four-volume set. If the frst volume covered his apprenticeship as an 

engineer and the second, the birth of the Soviet postwar missile program, in the third 

volume, we fnally have what might be called the full bloom of the Soviet space program. 

Here, Chertok describes his impressions of the apex of Soviet achievements in 

1. Rakety i lyudi [Rockets and People] (Moscow: Mashinostroyeniye, 1994); Rakety i lyudi: Fili Podlipki 

Tyuratam [Rockets and People: Creating a Rocket Industry] (Moscow: Mashinostroyeniye, 1996); Rakety 

i lyudi: goryachiye dni kholodnoy voyny [Rockets and People: Hot Days of the Cold War] (Moscow: 

Mashinostroyeniye, 1997); Rakety i lyudi: lunnaya gonka [Rockets and People: The Moon Race] (Moscow: 

Mashinostroyeniye, 1999).


space exploration, from the halcyon days of the launch of Yuriy Gagarin into orbit 

in 1961 to the frst piloted Soyuz mission in 1967. 

Chertok devotes a signifcant portion of the volume to the early years of Soviet 

human spacefight. These include a chapter on the Vostok and Voskhod programs, 

which left an indelible mark on early years of the “space race”; a lengthy meditation 

on the origins and early missions of the Soyuz program; and a gripping account of 

one of the most tragic episodes of the Soviet space program, the fight and death 

of cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov during the very frst piloted Soyuz fight in 1967. 

Additional chapters cover robotic programs such as the Molniya communications 

satellite system, the Zenit spy satellite program, and the Luna series of probes 

that culminated in the world’s frst survivable landing of a probe on the surface 

of the Moon. Chertok also devotes several chapters to the development of early 

generations of Soviet intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBM) and missile defense 

systems; his narrative here skillfully combines technical, political, personal, and 

strategic concerns, highlighting how these considerations were often diffcult to 

separate into neat categories. In particular, we learn about the Soviet drive to 

develop a workable solid propellant ICBM and the subsequent arguments over the 

development of second generation ICBMs in the late 1960s, a fght so acrimonious 

that contemporaries called it “the little civil war.” 

Chertok’s chapter on the Cuban Missile Crisis provides a radically unique perspective 

on the crisis, from the point of view of those who would have been responsible 

for unleashing nuclear Armageddon in 1962 had Kennedy and Khrushchev not 

been able to agree on a stalemate. Two further chapters cover the untimely deaths 

of the most important luminaries of the era: Sergey Korolev and Yuriy Gagarin. 

Each of these chapters is a tour de force, as Chertok uses a vast array of published 

accounts to enrich his own personal recollections of the episodes. Finally, historians 

of Soviet science will fnd much of interest in the concluding chapter, which focuses 

on the relationship between the space program and the Soviet Academy of Sciences. 

This chapter represents one of the most insightful descriptions of the formation of a 

Soviet “aerospace” elite during the post-World War II era. 

In the period covered by Chertok, from 1961 to 1967, the Soviet Union achieved an 

unprecedented series of frsts, the era that Russians still typically associate with a “golden 

age” of Soviet space exploration. Much as the Apollo missions indelibly convey a nostalgic 

sense of the possibilities of American space exploration, the visages of young 

“hero” cosmonauts from the early 1960s at Red Square parades continue to exemplify 

the immense political and cultural cachet of space exploration during the Cold War. The 

central fgure in Chertok’s tale is Sergey Pavlovich Korolev, the “Chief Designer” of the 

leading missile and spacecraft design organization, who many consider the most important 

architect of the Soviet push for space and who is still eulogized in saintly terms in the 

post-Soviet landscape. Westerners who have written about the history of the Soviet space 

program typically fxate on Korolev to the exclusion of other actors. There are compelling 

reasons to do so: Korolev was an extraordinarily charismatic fgure whose biography 

encompassed equal parts tragedy and redemption. His biographer Yaroslav Golovanov 

astutely noted that “Korolev was a most exact refection of an epoch . . . . He knew all 

its triumphs and drained the cup of its bitterness to the dregs. Korolev’s biography is 

the concretization of the history of our land in one man . . . .” 2 Chertok’s description of 

2. Yaroslav Golovanov, Sergei Korolev: The Apprenticeship of a Space Pioneer (Moscow: Mir Publishers, 

1975), p. 293. 

continued on page 57 

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From the Chief Historian (continued) 

Books, the Aeronautics and Space Report of the President, and the Aeronautics 

and Astronautics Chronology. We have published numerous books on NASA 

programs and have inaugurated—with the Science Mission Directorate—a large 

program on the History of the Scientifc Exploration of Earth and Space (HSEES), 

flling a large gap in space history literature. Other gaps are being flled by books 

in progress, which include those documenting the history of NASA’s life sciences, 

deep space navigation, aeronautics, and international relations. We have produced 

some innovative books, including Paul Dickson’s Dictionary of the Space Age, with 

its Oxford English Dictionary approach to the etymology of Space Age terms. All 

the while, we have tried to disseminate our products to the wider public in accordance 

with the National Aeronautics and Space Act of 1958. In addition to the 

New Series in NASA History by Johns Hopkins University Press, our agreement 

with Dover Publications to reprint our out-of-print classics goes a long way toward 

accomplishing this goal. 

In addition to our usual emphasis on aeronautics and space history, we have also 

taken the societal impact of spaceflight into our portfolio. Beginning with the 

eponymous conference proceedings, we have inaugurated a new NASA History 

subseries on societal impact, of which two more volumes, Cosmos and Culture and 

Historical Studies in the Societal Impact of Spaceflight, are in press. A nuanced 

and objective approach to the societal impact of spacefight is important not only 

because the multigenerational programs under way will require the support of 

society, but also because of the need to foster a closer relationship between science 

and society in general. 

Conferences and publications are only the tip of the iceberg. The NASA Historical 

Reference Collection, begun by Lee Saegesser and ably attended and supplemented 

by our archivists, is indispensible for a great deal of research and the large number 

of inquiries we receive both internally and externally. You will fnd the full scope 

of the NASA History Program described in the recently published third edition of 

Research in NASA History: A Guide to the NASA History Program. This Monograph 

in Aerospace History No. 43 is available free of charge upon request or online at 

http://www.history.nasa.gov/series95.html. 

Finally, our fellowship programs through the American Historical Association, the 

Society for the History of Technology, and the History of Science Society not only 

assure our contact with some of the leading historical associations, but also foster 

high-quality research in NASA history. 

All of this could not have been achieved without my dedicated staff at NASA 

Headquarters: Steve Garber as my right-hand man on book projects; Nadine 

Andreassen shepherding our contracts and grants, among many other duties; Chief 

Archivist Jane Odom, together with Colin Fries, John Hargenrader, and Liz Suckow, 

handling and making accessible the never-ending deluge of archives and the equally 

endless inquiries about space history. Glen Asner (now in the Offce of the Secretary 

of Defense) also helped shepherd many of our projects, as do a continual stream of 

enthusiastic interns, many of whom have gone on to important positions inside and 

outside NASA. Our historians, archivists, and record managers at each of the 10 

Centers do heroic work, often in the face of overwhelming odds. My sincere thanks 

to them all. It has been a joy working with them and my colleagues in the Offce of 

External Relations and throughout NASA.


As this issue testifes with the obituaries of Konrad Dannenberg and Eilene Galloway, 

we are rapidly losing the fnal pioneers of the frst 50 years of the Space Age. May 

the next 50 be as full of adventure, discovery, and surprise—and may NASA history 

document it with the same high standards of objectivity and scholarship that have 

characterized its frst 50 years. 

Thanks and farewell. 

Steve 

news From headquarters 

and the Centers 

Headquarters 

In the NASA History Division, Jane Odom continues to evaluate and acquire new 

material for the Historical Reference Collection (HRC). Additionally, she appraises 

material for historical value, directs the subsequent processing of collections, and 

answers reference requests. Specifcally this quarter, Jane participated in an Offce 

of General Counsel-led team charged with reviewing a dozen boxes from the Federal 

Records Center (FRC) in an attempt to locate responsive documents in a legal action 

against the Agency. Also, Jane assisted the Offce of Security and Program Protection 

with a declassifcation review of several dozen documents. She and Colin Fries reviewed 

several hundred PDFs in the database in an effort to resolve an ongoing search issue. 

Jane, Colin, and John Hargenrader attended the NASA History Program Review and 

Training at Ames Research Center in late April. Jane gave a talk on management of 

the Headquarters Historical Reference Collection. 

Collectively, Colin, John, and Liz Suckow all share reference duties, answering 

inquiries received by e-mail, assisting walk-in researchers, and helping Jane with 

Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests. Colin completed the scanning of a 

collection of speeches of key NASA managers. These approximately 300 speeches 

have been added to the internal database with plans under way to eventually publish 

them to the Internet. Colin is currently processing a collection of History Series 

unpublished manuscripts. Additionally, he assisted in proofreading several publications 

and continues to maintain the History Division Web pages. 

John has completed the scanning of a collection of Offce of Safety and Mission 

Assurance chronological correspondence fles, 1986–2001. He is working to preserve 

deteriorating newspaper clippings and worn folders throughout the HRC, focusing 

on the early Administrators’ fles. John is processing a donation from former 

Headquarters engineer Charles King, appraising and adding King materials to the 

existing propulsion, Apollo, Apollo-Soyuz, and Skylab fles. 

Liz has completed the appraisal of a 31-cubic-foot collection of Apollo program 

history sources borrowed from the FRC, copying historically signifcant fles from 

this collection to add to the HRC. She has begun a review of the next collection to 

be recalled from the FRC. It contains life sciences history sources, chronological 

correspondence fles from a number of Headquarters offces, and papers of Langley 


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News from Headquarters and the Centers (continued) 

Research Center (LaRC) engineer and Headquarters offcial T. L. K. Smull. Liz is 

currently processing a small collection of papers received from Langley and also 

Manned Spacecraft Center engineer Jesse Phillips pertaining to the design of the 

Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo spacecraft as well as the Space Shuttle. In April, she 

participated in a brown bag presentation on the history of Headquarters facilities, 

including little-known facts about Headquarters buildings and personnel. Liz 

continues a preservation project on the satellites and space probes fles by refolder 

ing and photocopying deteriorating materials. She also updated the Headquarters 

oral history inventory found at http://history.nasa.gov/oralhistory/ohcatalog.htm and 

attended a Society of American Archivists-sponsored workshop in Philadelphia 

on the archival care and use of photographs. And fnally, Liz has completed the 

processing of a collection of fles on the Space Flight Participant Program, including 

information on the teacher, journalist, and educator-astronaut in space programs. 

Ames Research Center (ARC) 

The American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) honored ARC as a 

2009 AIAA Historic Aerospace Site. The Center plans a celebration in August when 

the plaque is dedicated as part of ARC’s 70th-anniversary celebrations. The AIAA 

Board of Directors runs this effort in order to recognize “noteworthy and signifcant 

contributions made in both aeronautics and astronautics to culture and technology.” 

More specifcally, the selection committee recognized that 

NASA Ames has witnessed events signifcant to aerospace his 

tory, hosted facilities of unique design and capability, and fos 

tered the careers of people who forged aerospace history. By 

its selection as a 2009 Historic Aerospace Site, the AIAA pays 

tribute to NASA Ames’ legacy of sustained, signifcant contribu 

tion to aerospace history. Like Silicon Valley which surrounds it, 

and since its founding in 1939, Ames has developed an organiza 

tional culture that encourages researchers to constantly reinvent 

themselves and drive important new felds. Ames pioneered the 

technology behind all reentry vehicles, starting with the blunt 

body concept. Ames developed simulation facilities such as arc 

jets and ballistic ranges, designed thermal protection systems 

for manned spacecraft, and engineered probes that blazed into 

the atmospheres of Venus and Jupiter. Ames people solved the 

complex aerodynamics of rotorcraft, of powered-lift VTOLs, 

tilt-rotors, and V/STOL aircraft. Ames people designed and built 

what was one of the world’s greatest collections of wind tunnels, 

then supplemented them with the new technology of computa 

tional fuid dynamics. Ames led the development of simulators 

for human factors research, and made major improvements to 

air traffc management. In the exploration of space, NASA Ames 

engineered the Pioneer series of high-impact robotic explorers 

and other small satellites, launched the discipline of astrobiol 

ogy and space sciences research in planetary atmospheres, and 

designed and operated airborne science platforms. As a site of 

sustained accomplishment in aerospace research and develop 

ment, the NASA Ames Research Center fully merits this designa 

tion as an AIAA Historic Aerospace Site.


Jack Boyd gave a presentation to Google employees on the history of ARC. His pre 

sentation is available on YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c0hfmb-qOgA. 

Students from all over the world will travel to ARC this summer to attend the 

International Space University (ISU). History of technology will be a persistent 

theme throughout the ISU summer session, and Jack Boyd will present a lecture 

on the history of NASA. The ARC and Headquarters History Offces teamed up to 

augment the traveling ISU library, donating 120 books and CDs on various topics 

in NASA history, which will become a permanent part of the ISU library. The ISU 

will conclude with a poster session extravaganza on Shenandoah Plaza, part of the 

celebrations surrounding ARC’s 70th anniversary. 

Our offce welcomes two new interns this spring and summer. Jillian Slater, a gradu 

ate student from San Jose State University’s School of Library and Information 

Science, comes on board as an archives intern to process a small collection of Don 

Wilson’s Earth resource survey project fles (Acc. 2007-013). Erik Blackburn, an 

undergraduate fnishing up his B.A. in history at California State University East 

Bay, will support G. Warren Hall’s research into ARC’s contribution to rotorcraft 

and V/STOL aircraft development. 

April Gage delivered a presentation titled “Art at a NASA Center” at the NASA 

History programmatic meeting, in which she discussed the Artwork series of the 

Artifact collection (ART1387) held in the History Offce archives. In her presenta 

tion, April described collection management practices, provided biographical 

information about key artists, detailed two subseries of works from the 1970s and 

1980s depicting the Pioneer project and space settlements, and explored differences 

between the NASA Art Program and works created for ARC. 

April also authored a fnding aid for a 23.5-cubic-foot collection, Public Affairs Offce 

Records, 1940–2003 (number AFS1380). The fnding aid is posted on the Online 

Archive of California at http://www.oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/kt2c6032rr. 

Dryden Flight Research Center (DFRC) 

DFRC’s Christian Gelzer recently served as a reviewer for a manuscript under con 

sideration for publication in the aerospace feld and has begun the groundwork for 

a new book, which he will edit, that focuses on the research conducted by a recently 

retired aircraft. The book will be something of a Festschrift for the aircraft, written 

by participants on the aircraft’s programs over a 30-year span. Also, he hopes to 

have the truck fairing manuscript done by the end of June. 

Curtis Peebles continues working on his comprehensive look at the Hyper-X pro 

gram, which is expected to be complete by the end of the fscal year. His second 

volume of The Spoken 

Word will be printed shortly. 

Peter Merlin completed a draft of his monograph, Ikhana: Unmanned Aircraft 

Systems Western States Fire Missions. He has begun work on two chapters to appear 

in a multivolume series on NASA contributions to aeronautics being edited by Dick 

Hallion. He also presented two papers at a local chapter meeting of the AIAA, 

dubbed “AV-ation” for the Antelope Valley in which we lie. 

Betty Love has begun sorting the large collection of Dale Reed’s materials that will 

eventually be incorporated into the Center’s historical collection. 


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Glenn Research Center (GRC) 

Archivist Bob Arrighi (Wyle) is working with the GRC Imaging Technology Center 

to develop an interactive history of the Center’s aircraft from the 1940s to today. A 

list has been pared down of the aircraft to about 35 and photographs located for 

all. Brief histories are being written of the aircraft themselves and how they were 

utilized at Glenn. 

Recent activity in our collection includes the transcription of George Lewis’s talk 

at the groundbreaking for the Aircraft Engine Research Laboratory on 23 January 

1941; the transcription and background information have been added to the collection. 

In addition, Abe Silverstein fles in the Directors’ Collection and Personal 

Papers are being reprocessed and prepared for scanning. 

GRC is looking forward to a celebration of the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 

Moon landing. The history offce will be preparing a display outlining our contributions 

to the Apollo program and local reactions to the Moon landing. Archivist 

Bob Arrighi also provided material for an hour-long special that the local NBC 

affliate, WKYC, aired this month, entitled “To The Moon: Ohio’s Journey.” A great 

deal of the text and footage seen during the frst 20-minute segment of this special 

was provided by the archivist. The producer was provided with a synopsis of the 

Center’s achievements relating to the space program, historical flms to highlight 

each section, and photographs and information on Silverstein’s naming of Mercury 

and Apollo. This documentary can be viewed in segments on the WKYC Web site at 

http://www.wkyc.com. Search “To the Moon.” 

Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) 

Erik Conway received the NASA Headquarters History Award at the annual program 

review at ARC. His work has been possible due to support from the NASA 

Headquarters History Offce, the Science Mission Directorate, Langley Research 

Center, and JPL. Thanks to Nadine Andreassen, Blaine Baggett, Steve Dick, Debbie 

Douglas, Rob Ferguson, Mike Finneran, Steve Garber, Steven Kulczycki, Gail 

Langevin, Roger Launius, Donna Lawson, Jane Odom, Steve Sanford, and Margo 

Young for their assistance and encouragement over the last decade. 

Erik attended the “Climate and Cultural Anxiety” workshop at Colby College at the 

end of March. This effort was supported by the National Science Foundation and is 

intended to result in a volume of the journal Osiris. His contribution to the conference 

was an analysis of how NASA became the largest funder of climate science in 

the United States. Publication of the volume is scheduled for 2011. 

JPL is also beginning to work on a series of documentaries on its history. These 

will be similar to the Explorer 1 documentary done for the 50th anniversary of its 

launch in January 2008. The frst will be a “prequel” covering the founding of JPL 

and its frst few decades as an Army lab and is currently in production. We are currently 

interviewing veterans of JPL’s lunar projects of the 1960s, Ranger and Lunar 

Surveyor, for the next entry in the series. 

During 2008, Erik conducted 23 oral histories, primarily in support of the Mars 

robotic exploration history he is writing. He is currently researching and writing 

about the Mars Exploration Rover project.

Johnson Space Center (JSC) 


The JSC history team continues its ongoing oral history project and has expanded 

its collection recently with another extensive interview with Pioneer Flight Director 

and former Center Director Christopher C. Kraft. He provided in-depth information 

on the development of the Space Shuttle program. This transcript will be posted 

online with the frst of Kraft’s interviews, where he shares an extensive insight into 

the historic decision process for Apollo 8. 

The history team visited the Charles M. Schulz Museum in Santa Rosa, California, 

to visit the To the Moon: Snoopy Soars with NASA exhibit. Visitors to the museum 

will see part of an oral history interview conducted by the Houston history staff with 

Jamye Flowers Coplin. The video features Coplin, a former secretary with the astronaut 

offce, sharing the details of the unique farewell to the crew of Apollo 10 as they 

departed for the launchpad. With the crew on board the Command Module, named 

Charlie Brown, and the Lunar Module, named Snoopy, were a number of references to/ 

drawings of the well-loved cartoon characters created by Schulz. The exhibit continues 

until 20 July 2009. For more information, refer to http://www.charlesmschulzmuseum. 

org/pressreleases/20081212.html and http://www.charlesmschulzmuseum.org. Schulz is 

also known for his longtime relationship with NASA and the “Silver Snoopy,” given 

as part of NASA’s Space Flight Awareness program for outstanding efforts that contribute 

to the success of human spacefight missions. 

On the way to the annual NASA history meeting, the JSC history team traveled to the Charles M. Schulz 

Museum to see the exhibit honoring the 40th anniversary of Apollo 10. Pictured above are (left to right) 

Sandra Johnson, JSC; Jennifer Ross-Nazzal, JSC; Jeannie Schulz, wife of Charles Schulz; Rebecca 

Wright, JSC; and Jane O’Cain, museum curator. The group enjoyed exchanging information about 

the special relationship that NASA shares with the Schulz family. Taking the photo was Don Fraser, 

who helped in creating the frst group of Silver Snoopy pins used by NASA. He shared how he watched 

his friend “Sparky” Schulz create the drawing used as the model for the coveted award. The original 

drawing (1968) is on loan to the museum for the exhibit, courtesy of Fraser. 


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Langley Research Center (LaRC) 

Professor Susan Kern and a group of students from the College of William and 

Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, recently visited LaRC. The students, enrolled 

in Professor Kern’s class on the history of museums and historic preservation in 

the United States, were interested in touring the Langley 30-by-60-Foot Tunnel, a 

National Historic Landmark (NHL), now operated by Old Dominion University. 

This tunnel was used as a setting in the soon-to-be-released motion picture thriller 

The Box, starring Cameron Diaz and James Marsden. Old Dominion currently uses 

the tunnel to teach aerospace engineering students about wind tunnel research and 

to provide a wind tunnel for graduate student projects. Initially known as the Full 

Scale Tunnel, it was designed by a group of Langley engineers that included Smith 

J. DeFrance, Abe Silverstein, and Harry Goett in the late 1920s. Construction was 

completed in 1931. Production aircraft with wingspans up to 40 feet can ft in the 

tunnel’s test section. During World War II, nearly every U.S. fghter aircraft came 

to the 30-by-60-Foot Tunnel for drag clean-up studies. The tunnel also provides 

a capability for scale model aircraft to be free flown. Throughout its research 

life, the 30-by-60-Foot Tunnel has contributed to learning more about Mercury, 

Gemini, and Apollo spacecraft; supersonic transports; the blended wing body X-48 

transport; the Rogallo parawing; and a reconstructed Wright Flyer, among other 

space- and aircraft. 

For comparison, the students also toured the National Transonic Facility, NASA’s 

newest large wind tunnel. A stop by the Variable Density Tunnel, another NHL 

currently on display on the Langley Reid Conference Center grounds, provided an 

example of how Langley preserves historic landmarks when feasible. 

Former 30-by-60-Foot Tunnel research Branch Head Joseph Chambers gave 

an overview of past research conducted in the tunnel. Mary Gainer presented a 

historical perspective of building the tunnel, and Caroline Diehl presented her 

documentation of the signifcance of the tunnel for historic preservation purposes. 

All three presenters joined the students in a discussion of historic preservation 

issues at Langley. 

The government access television station of Henrico County, Virginia, approached 

LaRC with a request to interview a researcher about fight research at the Center 

from World War II to the present for a documentary video about Virginia’s con 

tributions to aviation during that period. Former Langley Aeronautics Director 

Roy V. Harris, Jr., was interviewed for several hours with the Langley hangar 

and research aircraft serving as the set. Excerpts from the interview appear in 

the documentary along with photographs of and video clips about the Center’s 

research. The documentary Taking Flight—Stories of Modern Virginia Aviation 

is available on Henrico County’s government access television station. DVDs are 

available to museums. 

Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC) 

Over the last several months, MSFC reported on the passing of two important 

members of Dr. Wernher von Braun’s original German rocket team in Huntsville, 

Alabama: Dr. Ernst Stuhlinger and Mr. Konrad Dannenberg. Aside from the loss 

of two proponents of NASA history, their passing has also raised interest in the


number of oral histories that are on fle regarding members of the German team and 

others who devoted their careers to MSFC and the exploration of space. 

This has prompted the historian at MSFC to conduct a review of the oral histories 

available at MSFC and elsewhere regarding retired MSFC team members. In that 

review, the historian noted a collection of at least 50 interviews that the Center 

sponsored in the early 1990s related to the design, research, and development of 

the Space Shuttle and Space Station, including a number of videotaped interviews 

conducted by those associated with the space program in the community. For 

example, a few years ago, the University of Alabama in Huntsville served as the 

site for a series of interviews with MSFC retirees and others in the community who 

have been involved in the space program. In addition, the university’s archives 

have a signifcant collection of oral history interviews related to the space program 

and MSFC. Also important are a series of interviews on fle at MSFC that were 

conducted by historians Andrew Dunar and Stephen Waring, who authored the 

MSFC history book Power to Explore. The MSFC archives also contain numerous 

oral interviews that were conducted in connection with past anniversaries and 

Center celebrations. 

It is interesting to note, however, that the historian’s review has resulted in the realization 

that there are still other interviews that need to be conducted. Therefore, he 

has put in place a project to capture additional interviews from those in Huntsville 

and elsewhere who have been associated with the space exploration work at MSFC. 

This work is in progress. 

Stennis Space Center (SSC) 

For NASA, 2008 marked a half century of achievement and excellence in space 

exploration. For Stennis Space Center (SSC), it was a year that focused on looking 

back as well as to the future. 

The shake, rattle, and roar of successful fring of the Space Shuttle main engine on 

22 October 2008 completed the certifcation of the fnal fight engine built for the 

nation’s Space Shuttle program, scheduled to end in 2010. Since 1975, SSC has tested 

every fight engine used in the Shuttle program, about 50 main engines in all for use 

on more than 120 fights. During that time, no mission failed as a result of engine 

malfunction. 

In January 2008, SSC engineers performed 1A power pack tests for the J-2X engine 

being built to help humans go back to the Moon and possibly go beyond as part of 

NASA’s Constellation Program. By late spring, engineers had completed a series of 

power pack tests, providing valuable data to use in refning the J-2X components. 

SSC will begin testing the new J-2X power pack in early 2010. 

SSC also will be responsible for testing the full J-2X engine when it is completed. As 

was the case with the Apollo program, the path to go back to the Moon again runs 

squarely through SSC. 

Also at SSC, construction of the new A-3 test stand continued as the frst pieces of 

fabricated steel were lifted into place in October 2008. Steel continued to rise at the 

site through the winter and spring, with the fnal piece of structural steel ftted into 

place 9 April 2009. 

11


12 

reCent PuBliCations 

NASA History Publications 

Research in NASA History: A Guide to the NASA History Program (NASA SP-2009 

4543), compiled by Steven J. Dick, Stephen J. Garber, and Jane Odom. This third 

edition updates information on the NASA history resources available in the 

Washington, DC, area and at the NASA Centers. Interested readers may obtain 

a free copy of this monograph by sending a self-addressed, stamped 9-by-12-inch 

envelope ($2.84 domestic frst-class postage for 13 ounces) to the NASA Information 

Center, NASA Headquarters, Washington, DC 20546, or by coming in person to the 

NASA History Division, room CO72, NASA Headquarters. An electronic version is 

available at http://history.nasa.gov/sp4543.pdf. 

New Series in NASA History Printed by 

Johns Hopkins University Press 

A Dictionary of the Space Age, New Series in NASA History, by Paul Dickson (The 

Johns Hopkins University Press, May 2009). This book is an unusually compelling, 

useful, and readable reference work. A greatly updated and expanded version of The 

Origins of NASA Names (NASA SP-4402, 1976), this new volume by an experienced 

lexicographer employs an Oxford English Dictionary-style approach to explain the 

etymology and frst usage of both familiar and esoteric aerospace terms of the last 

half century. 

NASA Publications Reprinted by Dover Publications 

Chariots for Apollo: The NASA History of Manned Lunar Spacecraft to 1969, by 

Courtney G. Brooks, James M. Grimwood, and Loyd S. Swenson, Jr. (Dover 

Publications, April 2009). This illustrated history chronicles the development of the 

Apollo spacecraft and Lunar Modules, tracing their design, construction, testing, 

and operation in outer space. The book covers the period from the origins of NASA 

to the successful conclusion of the Apollo 11 mission. Originally published by NASA 

as SP-4205, 1979, this edition features a new introduction by author Paul Dickson. 

Commercially Published Works 

Compiled by Chris Gamble 

Mapping and Naming the Moon: A History of Lunar Cartography and Nomenclature, by 

Ewen A. Whitaker (Cambridge University Press, August 2008). Almost 30 years after 

the Apollo missions, Tranquility Base, Hadley Rille, and Taurus-Littrow are names 

still resonant with the enormous achievements represented by the lunar landings. But 

how did these places get their names? Who named the Copernicus crater? Where did 

all those names on lunar maps come from, and what stimulated their selection? Ewen 

Whitaker traces the origins and evolution of the present-day systems for naming lunar 

features such as craters, mountains, valleys, and dark spots. Beautiful lunar maps 

spanning four centuries of progress wonderfully illustrate the unfolding of our ability 

to map the Moon. Rare, early photographs add to the sense of history.


Global TV: New Media and the Cold War, 1946–69, by James Schwoch (University 

of Illinois Press, December 2008). James Schwoch presents a unique retelling of the 

Cold War period by examining the relationship of global television, diplomacy, and 

new electronic communications media. Beginning with the Allied occupation of 

Germany in 1946 and ending with the 1969 Apollo Moon landing, this book explores 

major developments in global media, including the postwar absorption of the 

International Telecommunications Union into the United Nations and its impact 

on both television and international policy, the rise of psychological warfare and its 

relations to new electronic media of the 1950s, and the role of the Ford Foundation 

in shaping global communication research concepts. 

Severe Space Weather Events—Understanding Societal and Economic Impacts, by 

National Academies Press (December 2008). As a frst step toward determining the 

socioeconomic impacts of extreme space weather events (power grid outages, high- 

frequency communication blackouts, spacecraft anomalies) and addressing the ques 

tions of space weather risk assessment and management, a public workshop was held 

in May 2008. The workshop brought together representatives of industry, government, 

and academia to consider both direct and collateral effects of severe space weather 

events, the current state of the space weather services infrastructure in the United 

States, the needs of users of space weather data and services, and the ramifcations of 

future technological developments for contemporary society’s vulnerability to space 

weather. The workshop concluded with a discussion of unexplored or underexplored 

topics that would yield the greatest benefts in space weather risk management. 

Future Spacecraft Propulsion Systems: Enabling Technologies for Space Exploration, 

by Paul A. Czysz and Claudio Bruno (Springer-Praxis, 2nd ed., March 2009). In this 

second edition of Future Spacecraft Propulsion Systems, the authors demonstrate the 

need to break free from the old, established concepts of expendable rockets that used 

chemical propulsion and to develop new breeds of launch vehicle capable of both 

launching payloads into orbit at a dramatically reduced cost and conducting sustained 

operations in low-Earth orbit. The next steps to establishing a permanent presence in 

the solar system beyond Earth are the commercialization of sustained operations on 

the Moon and the development of advanced nuclear or high-energy space propulsion 

systems for solar system exploration out to the boundary of interstellar space. 

New Horizons: Reconnaissance of the Pluto-Charon System and the Kuiper Belt, edited 

by C. T. Russell; reprinted from Space Science Reviews, vol. 140/1–4, 2008 (Springer, 

April 2009). The New Horizons mission provides the frst in situ reconnaissance of the 

Pluto-Charon system and the Kuiper belt, arguably the last frontier of solar system 

exploration. This book describes the mission, its objectives, expected results, and 

instruments in articles written by the scientists and engineers most closely involved. 

The New Horizons mission is expected to return unique observations and discoveries 

that will revolutionize our understanding of the formation of the solar system. 

Images of America: White Sands Missile Range, by Darren Court and the White 

Sands Missile Range Museum (Arcadia Publishing, January 2009). Since the offcial 

fag raising on 9 July 1945, the White Sands Missile Range has become an integral 

part of global defense for the United States. A mere week after formation, Project 

Trinity tested the frst atomic bomb at an isolated site that was 100 miles north 

on what was then part of the Alamogordo Bombing Range—a test site for B-17 

pilots. Back at White Sands Proving Ground, as it was then named, personnel were 

unaware of the massive new weapon tested to their north. Instead their focus was 


13


14 

Recent Publications (continued) 

upon the arrival of what would be 300 railroad cars of captured German V-2 rockets 

and associated equipment. Later that year, over 100 captured German scientists, 

among them Wernher von Braun, would arrive at White Sands to assist in V-2 technology, 

launching America’s race to space; tens of thousands of rockets and missiles 

have since been fred on the range. Thousands of family members also lived and 

worked at the range; their stories can be found inside as well. 

Krafft Ehricke’s Extraterrestrial Imperative, by Krafft Ehricke and Marsha Freeman 

(Apogee Books Space Series/Collector’s Guide Publishing, Inc., February 2009). A 

summation of Krafft Ehricke’s work on encouraging the exploration of space, this 

account offers biographic information on the man himself; encompasses details of 

his new, innovative ideas; and portrays his thoughts on the importance and value of 

space travel for society. Historic and yet topical, this resource also includes many of 

Ehricke’s original works, many of which were previously out of print. 

Faster Than Sound: The Story of Supersonic Flight, by Bill Gunston (Haynes 

Publishing; 2nd edition, February 2009). This is the thrilling story of how test 

pilots in the United States and United Kingdom frst pierced the sound barrier in 

the late 1940s. Much has happened since then, and as recently as 2003 thousands of 

fare-paying passengers were routinely enjoying intercontinental air travel at speeds 

of up to Mach 2. The author describes in accessible style the rules and technologies 

of supersonic fight, ongoing developments in engine and airframe technology, the 

age of supersonic passenger transports like Concorde, and advances in supersonic 

fghter and bomber design. 

Exploding Superstars: Understanding Supernovae and Gamma-Ray Bursts, by Alain 

Mazure and Stéphane Basa (Springer-Praxis, February 2009). The exceptional cosmic 

history and the fabulous destinies of exploding stars—supernovae and gammaray 

bursters—are highly fertile areas of research and are also very special tools to 

further our understanding of the universe. In this book, the authors throw light on 

the assemblage of facts, hypotheses, and cosmological conclusions and show how 

these “beacons” illuminate their immediate surroundings and allow us to study the 

vast cosmos, like searchlights revealing the matter composing our universe. 

Probing the New Solar System, by John Wilkinson (CSIRO Publishing, February 

2009). Exploration by space probes has revealed many fascinating details about Earth’s 

planetary neighbors. This book discusses the latest fndings that have contributed to a 

changed understanding of the solar system—and how the revised defnition of a planet 

in 2006 by the International Astronomical Union affected this understanding—offering 

an up-to-date record of the many recent discoveries made about our solar system 

and other planetary systems using ground-based and space probe technology. 

ROSETTA: ESA’s Mission to the Origin of the Solar System, edited by Rita Schulz, 

Claudia J. Alexander, Hermann Boehnhardt, and Karl-Heinz Glassmeier. Partially 

reprinted, with updates and corrections, from the Space Science Reviews, vol. 128/1– 

4, 2007 (Springer, March 2009). ROSETTA: ESA’s Mission to the Origin of the Solar 

System is the frst book of its kind, which discusses the European Space Agency’s 

(ESA) science and instrumentation involved in the Planetary Cornerstone Mission, 

ROSETTA. Comets consist of the most primitive material in the solar system. An 

in-depth study of this material could provide us with the knowledge to understand 

the earliest epoch of the solar system’s formation. Until now, our knowledge of 

comets has come from Earth-based telescopes and fyby missions. Rosetta will be


the frst-ever spacecraft to rendezvous with a comet and go into orbit around the 

nucleus. Rosetta will also land on the surface of the comet with its lander Philae to 

perform dedicated in situ analysis of the comet nucleus composition and structure. 

The THEMIS Mission, edited by James L. Burch and Vassilis Angelopoulos. Reprinted 

from Space Science Reviews, vol. 141/1–4, 2008 (Springer, February 2009). The Time 

History of Events and Macroscale Interactions during Substorms (THEMIS) mission 

aims to determine the trigger and large-scale evolution of substorms by employing fve 

identical microsatellites which line up along Earth’s magnetotail to track the motion 

of particles, plasma, and waves from one point to another and, for the frst time, 

resolve space-time ambiguities in key regions of the magnetosphere on a global scale. 

The probes also traverse the radiation belts and the dayside magnetosphere, allowing 

THEMIS to address additional baseline objectives. This volume describes the mis 

sion, the instrumentation, and the data derived from them. 

Planetary Crusts: Their Composition, Origin and Evolution, by S. Ross Taylor and 

Scott McLennan (Cambridge University Press, January 2009). This is the frst book 

ever published to explain how and why solid planets and satellites develop crusts. It 

presents a geochemical and geological survey of the crusts of the Moon, Mercury, 

Venus, Earth, Mars, the asteroid Vesta, and several satellites such as Europa, 

Ganymede, and Callisto. After describing how solar system bodies are formed, the 

authors compare the different planetary crusts and discuss current controversies on 

the subject. Extensively referenced and annotated, this book presents an up-to-date 

survey of the scientifc problems of crustal development. 

The Hinode Mission, edited by Takashi Sakurai. Reprinted from Solar Physics 

Journal, vol. 243/1, 2007, and vol. 249/2, 2008 (Springer, February 2009). The Solar-B 

satellite was launched in 2006 by the Institute of Space and Astronautical Science, 

Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (ISAS/JAXA) and was renamed Hinode 

(“sunrise” in Japanese). This book gives a comprehensive description of the mission 

that carries three instruments: the X-Ray Telescope (XRT), the Extreme Ultraviolet 

Imaging Spectrometer (EIS), and the Solar Optical Telescope (SOT). Hinode is the 

Japanese mission for solar physics with contributions from NASA and ESA. 

Frontiers of Propulsion Science, by Marc G. Millis and Eric W. Davis (AIAA, 

February 2009). Frontiers of Propulsion Science is the first-ever compilation of 

emerging science relevant to such notions as space drives, warp drives, gravity 

control, and faster-than-light travel—the kind of breakthroughs that would revolu 

tionize spacefight and enable human voyages to other star systems. Although these 

concepts might sound like science fction, they are appearing in growing numbers in 

reputable scientifc journals. 

History of Rocketry and Astronautics, vol. 30, edited by Otfrid G. Liepack, American 

Astronomical Society History Series (IAA History Symposia, vol. 20, 2009). This 

volume contains the proceedings of the 34th History Symposium of the International 

Academy of Astronautics (IAA) in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 2000. 

Space Shuttle Main Engine: The First Twenty Years and Beyond, by Robert E. Biggs 

(American Astronomical Society History Series, vol. 29, 2008). In this volume is 

a description of the history of the design, development, and production of Space 

Shuttle Main Engine by the Rocketdyne Division of Rockwell International, under 

contract with MSFC, after having won the competitive bid to do this arduous 

task in July 1971. Included are the details of the many technical, logistical, and 


15


16 


managerial diffculties solved by the team of thousands of specialists at Rocketdyne 

and MSFC—things such as engine design and operating characteristics, program 

requirements, goals, schedule diffculties, and problem solutions. 

Missiles for the Fatherland: Peenemünde, National Socialism, and the V-2 Missile, by 

Michael B. Petersen (Cambridge University Press, February 2009). Missiles for the 

Fatherland tells the story of the scientists and engineers who built the V-2 missile in 

Hitler’s Germany. This is the frst scholarly history of the culture and society that 

underpinned missile development at Germany’s secret missile base at Peenemünde. 

Using mainly primary source documents and publicly available oral history interviews, 

Michael Petersen examines the lives of the men and women who worked at 

Peenemünde and later at the underground slave labor complex called Mittelbau- 

Dora, where concentration camp prisoners mass-produced the V-2. 

Tom Sachs: Space Program, by Tom Sachs with contributions from Buzz Aldrin, 

Louise Neri, and Arthur C. Danto (Rizzoli, February 2009). For over a decade, 

Sachs has pondered the technical ingenuity and romance with the unknown that 

brought America the Apollo program. This publication documents the culmination 

of his research: the realization of his own life-size space program, composed of three 

main sculptural elements (Lunar Module, Mission Control, and Space Suit) and a 

fight plan, all put to use during a live demonstration of a lunar landing. In his exuberant 

manufacture of objects and scenarios, Sachs asks barbed questions of modern 

creativity that relate to conception, production, consumption, and circulation. 

Launching Science: Science Opportunities Provided by NASA’s Constellation System, 

by the Committee on Science Opportunities Enabled by NASA’s Constellation 

System and National Research Board (National Academies Press, February 2009). 

In January 2004, NASA was given a new policy direction known as the Vision for 

Space Exploration. That plan, now renamed the United States Space Exploration 

Policy, called for sending human and robotic missions to the Moon, on to Mars, 

and beyond. In 2005, NASA outlined how to conduct the frst steps in implementing 

this policy and began the development of a new human-carrying spacecraft known 

as Orion, the lunar lander known as Altair, and the launch vehicles Ares I and Ares 

V. Collectively, these are called the Constellation System. In November 2007, NASA 

asked the National Research Council (NRC) to evaluate the potential for new science 

opportunities enabled by the Constellation System of rockets and spacecraft. 

The NRC committee evaluated a total of 17 mission concepts for future space science 

missions. Of those, the committee determined that 12 would beneft from the 

Constellation System and 5 would not. This book presents the committee’s fndings 

and recommendations, including cost estimates, a review of the technical feasibility 

of each mission, and identifcation of the missions most deserving of future study. 

The Rockets and Missiles of White Sands Proving Ground: 1945–1958, by Gregory 

P. Kennedy (Schiffer Publishing, Ltd., March 2009). In 1945, the United States 

Army established a testing center for rockets and guided missiles in south-central 

New Mexico. Named White Sands Proving Ground, this center was the locale for 

many of America’s frst steps towards space. Rockets and Missiles of White Sands 

Proving Ground chronicles major activities at the base from 1945 to 1958. During 

this period, the Army, Navy, and Air Force all tested missiles at the desert installation. 

This book details the development and testing for such missiles as Hermes, 

Corporal, Nike Ajax, Sergeant, Honest John, and Viking. These missiles formed the 

backbone of much of America’s arsenal during the Cold War and represented major


technological advancements. In 1958, the White Sands Proving Ground became the 

White Sands Missile Range, as it is known today. 

Satellite Remote Sensing for Archaeology, by Sarah H. Parcak (Routledge, March 

2009). This handbook is the frst comprehensive overview of the feld of satellite 

remote sensing for archaeology and how it can be applied to ongoing archaeo 

logical feldwork projects across the globe. It provides a survey of the history and 

development of the feld, connecting satellite remote sensing in archaeology to 

broader developments in remote sensing, archaeological method and theory, cul 

tural resource management, and environmental studies. With a focus on practical 

uses of satellite remote sensing, Sarah H. Parcak evaluates satellite imagery types 

and remote sensing analysis techniques specifc to the discovery, preservation, and 

management of archaeological sites. 

Organizational Learning at NASA: The Columbia and Challenger Accidents, by 

Julianne G. Mahler and Maureen Hogan Casamayou (Georgetown University Press, 

April 2009). Just after 9:00 a.m. on 1 February 2003, the Space Shuttle Columbia 

broke apart and was lost over Texas. This tragic event led, as the Challenger accident 

had 17 years earlier, to an intensive government investigation of the technological 

and organizational causes of the accident. The investigation found chilling similari 

ties between the two accidents, leading the Columbia Accident Investigation Board 

to conclude that NASA failed to learn from its earlier tragedy. Despite the frequency 

with which organizations are encouraged to adopt learning practices, organizational 

learning—especially in public organizations—is not well understood and deserves 

to be studied in more detail. This book flls that gap with a thorough examination of 

NASA’s loss of the two Shuttles. 

Space, Propulsion & Energy Sciences International Forum, SPESIF-2009, Huntsville, 

Alabama, 24–26 February 2009, edited by Glen A. Robertson (American Institute 

of Physics, April 2009). The SPESIF-2009 technical program features a broad spec 

trum of topics on space, propulsion, and energy science. These topics span the range 

from basic research to recent technology advances and hardware testing among 

academia, industry, and government. Included were forums on astrosociology, 

new frontiers in propulsion science, and thermal applications in microgravity, with 

workshops on future energy sources, highrequency gravitational waves, and future 

directions in space science and technology. 

Space Conquest: The Complete History of Manned Spaceflight, by Francis Dreer 

(Haynes Publishing, January 2009). The greatest ever feat of science and technology 

in the history of humankind was when the United States’ Apollo 11 landed men 

on the surface of the Moon and returned them safely to Earth. The great ideologi 

cal struggle of the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union was 

defned by the space race—a race that was won by the Americans. This stunningly 

illustrated story of that race covers the Soviet and American space programs and 

Neil Armstrong’s historic “one small step for man” in July 1969, and continues into 

the era of space stations and reusable spacecraft like the Shuttle. 

License to Orbit: The Future of Commercial Space Travel, by Joseph Pelton and 

Peter Marshall (Apogee Books Space Series/Collector’s Guide Publishing, Inc., 

April 2009). Two leading experts on space systems with decades of experience in 

the feld provide important and current insights on developments in today’s com 

mercial space industry in this ambitious and extensively researched examination. 


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The authors look at the lives, ambitions, and struggles of the billionaires funding 

and supporting this industry, while also examining the nature of the strained relations 

and alternative goals of space agencies versus the private spacefight industry. 

The analysis even includes descriptions of the amazing new technologies that could 

revolutionize space exploration and space industries in the coming decades. 

Deep Space Craft: An Overview of Interplanetary Flight, by Dave Doody (Springer- 

Praxis, April 2009). Deep Space Craft opens the door to interplanetary fight. It 

looks at this world from the vantage point of real operations on a specifc mission 

and follows a natural trail from the day-to-day working of this particular 

spacecraft, through the functioning of all spacecraft, to the collaboration of the 

various disciplines to produce the results for which a spacecraft is designed. The 

author shows how, in order to make sense of all the scientifc data coming back 

to Earth, the need for experiments and instrumentation arises, and he follows the 

design and construction of the instruments through to their placement and testing 

on a spacecraft prior to launch. Examples are given of the interaction between 

an instrument’s science team and the mission’s fight team to plan and specify 

observations, gather and analyze data in fight, and fnally present the results and 

discoveries to the scientifc community. 

Threats, Risks, and Sustainability: Answers by Space: Studies in Space Policy, vol. 

2, edited by Kai-Uwe Schrogl, Charlotte Mathieu, and Agnieszka Lukaszczyk 

(Springer, April 2009). At least until 2050, development is challenged by a strong 

population growth, more severe environmental strains, growing mobility, and 

dwindling energy resources. All these factors will lead to serious consequences for 

humankind. Inadequate agricultural resources, water supply, and nonrenewable 

energy sources; epidemics; climate change; and natural disasters will further heavily 

impact human life. The European Space Policy Institute sheds a new light on 

threats, risks, and sustainability by combining approaches from various disciplines. 

It analyzes what could be the contribution of space tools to predict, manage, and 

mitigate those threats. It aims at demonstrating that space is not a niche but has 

become an overarching tool in solving today’s problems. 

Discovering the Expanding Universe, by Harry Nussbaumer and Lydia Bieri 

(Cambridge University Press, May 2009). The discovery of the expanding universe is 

one of the most exciting exploits in astronomy. This book explores its history, from 

the beginnings of modern cosmology with Einstein in 1917, through Lemaître’s discovery 

of the expanding universe in 1927 and his suggestion of a Big Bang origin, to 

Hubble’s contribution of 1929 and the subsequent years when Hubble and Humason 

provided the essential observations for further developing modern cosmology, and 

fnally to Einstein’s conversion to the expanding universe in 1931. 

Success Stories in Satellite Systems, by D. K. Sachdev (AIAA, 2009). This unique 

book presents frsthand histories, case studies, and lessons learned from many of the 

pioneers who built the satellite industry. They share the experiences, technologies, 

and business challenges that led to the successful development of an industry that is 

woven into the very core of our everyday lives. Historically important photographs 

throughout the book help to illuminate these compelling narratives. 

Safety Design for Space Systems, by Tommaso Sgobba, Axel Larsen, and Gary 

Musgrave (Butterworth-Heinemann, April 2009). Fully supported by the 

International Association for the Advancement of Space Safety, written by the


leading fgures in the industry, with frontline experience from projects ranging 

from the Apollo missions and Skylab to the Space Shuttle and the International 

Space Station, this book provides a comprehensive reference for aerospace engi 

neers in the industry. It addresses each of the key elements that affect space 

systems safety, including the space environment (natural and induced), human 

physiology in space, human rating factors, emergency capabilities, launch pro 

pellants and oxidizer systems, life-support systems, battery and fuel cell safety, 

nuclear power generators safety, habitat activities, fre protection, safety-critical 

software development, collision avoidance systems design, and operations and 

on-orbit maintenance. 

Truth, Lies, and O-Rings: Inside the Space Shuttle Challenger Disaster, by Allan J. 

McDonald and James R. Hansen (University Press of Florida, April 2009). On a 

cold January morning in 1986, NASA launched the Space Shuttle Challenger despite 

warnings against doing so by many individuals, including Allan McDonald. The 

fery destruction of Challenger on live television moments after launch remains 

an indelible image in the nation’s collective memory. In Truth, Lies, and O-Rings, 

McDonald, a skilled engineer and executive, relives the tragedy from where he stood 

at Launch Control Center. Truth, Lies, and O-Rings is the frst look at the Challenger 

tragedy and its aftermath from someone who was on the inside, recognized the 

potential disaster, and tried to prevent it. It also addresses the early warnings of 

very severe debris issues from the frst two post-Challenger fights, which ultimately 

resulted in the loss of Columbia some 15 years later. 

One Giant Leap: Apollo 11 40 Years On, by Piers Bizony (Zenith Press, May 2009). 

The frst Moon landing in July 1969 captured the imagination of the world as no 

subsequent “space spectacular” has. Forty years later, space historian Piers Bizony 

has produced a stunning visual record of this unparalleled mission. Drawing on 

high-resolution images from the entire suite of Apollo 11’s on-board flm magazines, 

the book presents a complete picture of the mission: the launch, the astronauts’ lives 

inside the spacecraft, the landing and Moon walk, and fnally the return to Earth to 

worldwide acclaim. Accompanying these images is Bizony’s essay on the lasting cul 

tural and emotional impact of the mission, augmented with quotes from astronauts, 

scientists, and literary commentators. 

Space Technologies for the Benefit of Human Society and Earth, edited by Phillip Olla 

(Springer, May 2009). When discussing the advancement of space science and space 

technology, most people instinctively think about deep space fights, lunar stations, 

and thrilling outer space adventures. The fact is that the majority of the human 

technology in space, which consists of interconnected satellites, points towards 

Earth and is used to provide services for and fulfll the goals of people on planet 

Earth. This book describes some of the most important applications being devel 

oped, along with the space infrastructure upgrades being implemented to support 

them. It also provides a comprehensive review of how space technology can be used 

to resolve fundamental environmental, technological, and humanitarian challenges 

that we are experiencing on our planet. 

From Tajikistan to the Moon: A Story of Tragedy, Survival and Triumph of the Human 

Spirit, by Robert Frimtzis (Ecliptic Publishing, June 2009). From Tajikistan to the 

Moon is an inspirational, true story of the spellbinding events of World War II, the 

author’s escape from his war-torn country, his fight to freedom, and his ultimate 

success in America. Told from a unique Soviet perspective, Robert Frimtzis takes 


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you from surviving bombs of the Nazi blitzkrieg, to imminent starvation and deprivation 

in a mud hut in Tajikistan, to contributing to America’s lunar exploration and 

spacecraft development. 

Chasing Icarus: The Seventeen Days in 1910 That Forever Changed American 

Aviation, by Gavin Mortimer (Walker & Company, April 2009). By 1910—seven 

years after the Wright brothers frst lifted a plane off the ground at Kitty Hawk— 

America and the world were transfxed by the danger and challenge of mastering 

the air. Yet which form of fight would predominate was far from clear—dirigibles, 

balloons, and airplanes all had their passionate advocates. The great dirigible 

America, captained by Walter Wellman, lifted off from New Jersey and for several 

turbulent days attempted to be the first flying machine to cross the Atlantic. 

From St. Louis, ballooning teams from around the world took off in pursuit of 

the Gordon Bennett International Balloon Cup. And at the famed racetrack at 

Belmont Park, New York, huge crowds gathered to watch airplane pilots race 

above the oval and attempt to set speed, altitude, and distance records. During the 

17 days in October 1910 that Gavin Mortimer vividly recounts in Chasing Icarus, 

the question of primacy in the air was on full display, after which the future of 

aviation was never in doubt. 

Aeronautics: A Graphic History, vol. 1, by Eric Stoffel, Marcel Uderzo, and Frank 

Coste (Bezouce, France: Ideesplus Publisher, 2008). During a visit to the Bourget 

Airport, a boy called Axel starts asking his father questions. The father is himself 

a pilot and the son of a pilot—this begins a story of the most signifcant events in 

aeronautics, from the frst kites fown by the Chinese in ancient times, to Blériot’s 

crossing of the English Channel in 1909. The human adventure of a dream come 

true—the dream of fying. 

Space Commercialization and the Development of Space Law from a Chinese Legal 

Perspective, by Yun Zhao (Nova Science Publishers, April 2009). This will be the 

frst English book on space law written by a Chinese scholar. With the rapid development 

of space activities in China, many space scientists and lawyers are keen to 

know Chinese legal perspectives on policies and laws on space activities. The book 

discusses new development of space law in view of the rapid development of space 

commercial activities. 

Next Generation of Human Space Flight Systems, edited by Alfred T. Chesley (Nova 

Science Publishers Inc., April 2009). This book is dedicated to important issues 

concerning Space Shuttle retirement and transition to the next generation of human 

spacefight systems. Chesley places emphasis on the issues of costs, suppliers, transition 

progress, environmental risks, and mission identifcation and scope. 

Media, NASA, and America’s Quest for the Moon, by Harlen Makemson (Peter Lang 

Publishing, May 2009). When Apollo 11 landed on the Moon in July 1969, it capped 

not only the most remarkable engineering feat in history, but also a decade-long 

battle over how much access the press and public should have to the crewed space 

program. This book tells the behind-the-scenes story of how NASA and the U.S. 

media were often at odds but ultimately showed extraordinary cooperation in bringing 

the story of lunar conquest to the world. 

The ARRL Satellite Handbook, by Steve Ford (American Radio Relay League, 

February 2009). The ARRL Satellite Handbook, by QST Editor Steve Ford, 

WB8IMY, brings the thrill of satellite communications within your reach. Filled


with understandable descriptions and illustrations, this book includes all the tools 

you need to participate in this exciting feld. This very readable guide was designed 

to give a broad introduction to the subject of satellite communications, while providing 

the practical fundamentals you need to explore, track, and operate ham radio 

satellites on your own. 

Launching a New Mission: Michael Griffin and NASA’s Return to the Moon, by W. 

Henry Lambright (IBM Center for the Business of Government, 2009). President 

George W. Bush told NASA to return to the Moon and prepare for crewed exploration 

of Mars. The man he put in charge, Michael Griffn, was a certifed rocket 

scientist with a passion for crewed space exploration. In the four years he served 

as NASA Administrator, Griffin was continually forced to make controversial 

fnancial tradeoffs that brought him into confict with constituencies who disagreed 

with him. He did, however, make signifcant progress in redirecting NASA toward 

the new Moon-Mars program. This report provides insights into the challenge of 

managing large, controversial programs in government. It also offers lessons for 

both the next NASA Administrator and other public executives who are expected to 

lead in challenging political and fscal environments. 

Spacesuits: Within the Collections of the Smithsonian National Air and Space 

Museum, by Amanda Young and Mark Avino (Power House Books, May 2009). The 

goal of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to Earth required the 

development of three things: spacecraft, launch vehicles, and protective clothing. 

Spacesuits: Within the Collections of the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum 

takes the reader through the development of the last category, the spacesuits used 

during this venture. Highlighting the pressure suits created during the years leading 

up to the lunar missions and beyond, this book features dramatic photographs of 

the Smithsonian’s collection, as well as never-before-published historical images of 

spacesuit development and testing—range-of-motion studies, for example, in which 

researchers wore spacesuits while playing baseball and football. The book also 

includes a group of advanced spacesuits, which, though never used on a mission, are 

in many respects the most exciting suits ever created. 

La Naissance d’Ariane [The Birth of Ariane] by Jean-Pierre Morin (Editions Edite, 

April 2009). In the early 1970s, western European countries could launch their payloads 

one of two ways, with the United States or not at all. By the 1980s, Europe had 

developed its own independent launch vehicle, the Ariane, and rose from the United 

States’ junior partner to its competitor in launch services. La Naissance d’Ariane 

chronicles the technological and political challenges of this achievement. 

online resourCes 

http://history.nasa.gov/ap10fj/ 

The Apollo 10 Flight Journal, created by David Woods with the assistance of Ian 

Roberts and Robin Wheeler, richly documents the journey of Apollo 10 literally from 

Earth to the Moon and back. It contains an extensively annotated mission transcript, 

supporting technical documents, photos, and more. It is a companion to the Flight 

Journals for the Apollo 8, 9, 11, 12, 15, and 16 missions (http://history.nasa.gov/afj/) and 

to Eric Jones’s Apollo Lunar Surface Journal (http://history.nasa.gov/alsj/). 

21


22 

historiC Preservation news 

Ames Research Center Receives 2008 

Preservation Design Award 

Ames Research Center was the recipient of a 2008 Preservation Design Award from 

the California Preservation Foundation (CPF) for the “Cultural Resources Studies and 

Reports” category. Center Director Pete Warden congratulated Keith Venter, Historic 

Preservation Offcer, Code RCE, for his outstanding leadership and Tom Anderson, 

Senior Environmental Compliance Specialist, Integrated Science Solutions, Inc. 

Together with Rich Sucre of Page & Turnbull, San Francisco, they prepared the report 

on “Evaluation of Historic Resources Associated with the Space Shuttle Program at 

Ames Research Center.” The Ames Environmental and History offces also provided 

important support that led to this prestigious recognition. In announcing the award, 

CPF executive director Cindy Heitzman praised the team for its “exemplary contribution 

to the preservation of California’s rich and diverse historic resources.” 

The award was presented at a ceremony on 18 October 2008, in Long Beach, 

California, aboard the Queen Mary. Wayne Donaldson, California State Historic 

Preservation Offcer, was the MC of the event and stated that while California’s 

research facilities have spurred worldwide technology innovations, they are often 

overlooked by traditional historic resource surveys. This report examines structures 

that are part of the “contemporary history”: laboratories and buildings where 

NASA developed the Space Shuttle. 

Participating in the ceremony are Tom Anderson and Mike Makinen of Ames Research Center and 

Cora Palmer and Rich Sucre of Page & Turnbull.


Participating in the unveiling were (left to right) Bill Schultz, chairman of the VAHS Historical Marker 

Committee; Randall Burdette, director of the Virginia Department of Aviation; Dr. John Campbell, 

director of NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility; Ron Wolff, chairperson of the Accomack County Board 

of Supervisors; and Joanna Wilson, Virginia Department of Historic Resources. Photo Credit: NASA. 

Highway Marker Recognizes Wallops Flight Facility, 

Virginia, as One of the Oldest Launch Sites in the World 

A Virginia historical marker recognizing the contributions of NASA’s Wallops 

Flight Facility (WFF) to aerospace research was unveiled on 22 November 2008 at 

the entrance to the NASA Visitor Center on Route 175. The nomination of Wallops 

as a historic site was provided by the Virginia Aeronautical Historical Society 

(VAHS) and supported by the Virginia Department of Historic Resources and the 

Virginia Department of Aviation. 

Established in 1945 by the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA), 

Wallops is one of the oldest launch sites in the world. Tiamat, the Army Air Forces’ 

frst air-to-air guided missile, was the frst rocket tested at the NACA Langley 

Field Station at Wallops Island. Ten of these missiles were launched from Wallops 

Island, Virginia, beginning on 4 July 1945. Originally the purpose of the program 

was to develop a missile for combat use; however, with the close of the war, this was 

changed to research on automatic control systems. 

Wallops Flight Facility Designates 

Historic Preservation Offcer 

WFF announces the designation of Randy Stanley as its new Historic Preservation 

Offcer (HPO). He joins NASA’s team of 13 HPOs assigned to oversee compliance 

with the National Historic Preservation Act (NHPA). The former WFF HPO, Paul 

Neidinger, left NASA last year to relocate to Texas with his family. 


23


24 

Historic Preservation News (continued) 

With a degree in architectural engineering 

technology, Randy moved from 

his home state of West Virginia to the 

Eastern Shore of Virginia in 1985 to 

work as a contractor at WFF. In 1991, he 

joined the WFF Facilities Engineering 

Branch managing larger rehabilitation 

and modification. In January 2009, 

after working for four contractors at 

WFF, Randy became a NASA civil 

servant, joining the Agency’s Facilities 

Management Branch as the Architect/ 

Staff Engineer. 

Randy Stanley. 

Randy’s primary HPO duty is to review planned NASA programs and projects and 

determine if consultation is triggered under the NHPA implementing regulations. He 

is already leading negotiations with the Virginia Department of Historic Resources in 

Richmond involving several ongoing projects. Having worked in most of the buildings 

at Wallops, Randy brings sound insight into the mission and history of WFF. He also 

brings a focus on the importance of communicating historic resource data through 

Geographic Information Systems applications and master planning. 

NASA Receives Preserve 

America Award 

In February 2009, NASA received the 

Advisory Council on Historic Preservation 

Award for “Federal Preservation America 

Accomplishment” from the ACHP. The 

award states that NASA “has responded 

in an exemplary manner to the Executive 

Order, 13287, Preserve America, Section 3 

requirement to report to the President and 

the Secretary of the Interior on the identifcation, 

protection, and use of historic 

Olga Dominguez (right), Assistant Administrator, Offce of Infrastructure, properties within federal agency inven 

and Tina Norwood (center), NASA Federal Preservation Offcer, received the tories every three years. With the forth 

award from Susan Barnes, Deputy Chair of the ACHP, during a ceremony 

held 20 February at the Library of Congress, Washington, DC. 

coming phase-out of the Shuttle Program, 

NASA has made tremendous strides in 

the past three years to expand its inventory of historic properties through identifcation 

and protection of them, and their rehabilitation for continued use in future 

programs. NASA demonstrated through coordination among its 10 centers across 

the U.S. that commitments made in 2005 have been followed through by the agency.” 

John Wesley Powell Award Given to 

Glenn Archivist Bob Arrighi 

Bob Arrighi was honored with the John Wesley Powell Award from the Society for 

History in the Federal Government (SHFG) for his CD on the former Altitude Wind 

Tunnel (AWT) located at Glenn Research Center, Ohio.


Each year the society awards six prizes for various types of historical publication 

and work furthering the understanding and history of the federal government. The 

John Wesley Powell Award is given for any form of interpretive historical presentation 

including, but not limited to, museum exhibits, historical flms, CDs, Web sites, 

or multimedia displays. John Wesley Powell was the second director of the U.S. 

Geological Survey but is most famous for his early explorations of the American 

West, including the 1869 Powell Geographic Expedition that included the frst passage 

through the Grand Canyon. The Powell prize is given to either an individual 

or to principal collaborators for a single major effort completed within the two 

calendar years immediately preceding the year in which the award is announced. 

The winners were announced in the annual meeting of the society held 18–19 March 

2009 at the National Archives and Records Administration in Washington, DC. 

The interactive history includes a chronological history, photographic surveys, 

over 200 still images, historic video footage, and links to over 70 reports and publications. 

It is just one piece of the larger effort to document the AWT before its 

demolition. The project included gathering documents from a variety of sources, 

scanning of hundreds of images, digitizing numerous historic flms, conducting 

oral histories, and researching information on the facility, its tests, and signifcance 

to the aerospace community. The information is being distributed to the public 

through a number of methods including a book that is now in fnal review, a documentary 

video, a Web site (http://awt.grc.nasa.gov), and a lengthy Historic American 

Buildings Survey (HABS) report. 

Bob Arrighi receives his award from Lin Ezell, SHFG Awards Committee 

member and Director of the National Museum of the Marine Corps. 

25


26 

other news in aerosPaCe history 

News from the American Astronautical 

Society (AAS) History Committee 

Newsletter and Distribution List 

Explorer, the periodic newsletter of the AAS History Committee, is available on 

the AAS Web site at http://astronautical.org/committees/history/. If you would like 

to directly receive each issue, as well as an occasional bit of information related to 

spacefight history, send an e-mail with your request to the Chair of the History 

Committee, Michael Ciancone, at michael.l.ciancone@nasa.gov. 

News from the National Air and Space Museum (NASM) 

The National Air and Space Museum will open the exhibition Alan Bean: Painting 

Apollo, First Artist On Another World at the Museum on the Mall, 16 July 2009 

through 13 January 2010, in conjunction with the 40th anniversaries of the frst two 

Apollo Moon landings. Alan Bean: Painting Apollo, First Artist On Another World 

represents a major exhibition of paintings by American artist and Apollo 12 astronaut 

Alan Bean. The exhibition will be the largest exhibition of Bean’s work to date with 

approximately 40 original paintings and drawings. The exhibit will enable viewers to 

experience a world 238,000 miles away through the eyes of the only artist to walk on 

the lunar surface. Artifacts from NASM’s collection will supplement the exhibit as 

three-dimensional references to the lunar equipment depicted in the paintings. 

A number of NASM staff participated in the 22nd annual Mutual Concerns of Air 

and Space Museums Conference in Ottawa, Canada, cohosted by NASM and the 

Canada Aviation Museum from 18 to 21 April 2009. NASM staff presented on topics 

including hanging artifacts in public spaces, collections planning, the care and preservation 

of textiles, controversy in museum exhibits, civic engagement, lab-oriented 

aerospace education programs, aerospace art collections, and exhibit cell phone 

tours. The very successful conference, which included nearly 150 participants from 

as far afeld as Poland and Australia, concluded with extra tours of museums near 

Ottawa and an overnight trip to three aviation museums near Toronto. 

Two NASM staff members, Roger D. Launius, Division of Space History, and 

Andrew K. Johnston, Center for Earth and Planetary Studies, have published the 

Smithsonian Atlas of Space Exploration (New York: HarperCollins, 2009, $34.99, 

230 pages). As the advertising copy from HarperCollins says, “The Atlas of Space 

Exploration depicts the ever-fascinating history of the space age and humanity’s 

progress in exploring new frontiers. Incredible images from NASA and other 

sources, visual conceptions of Moon bases, and newly commissioned maps reveal a 

visual history spanning the earliest eras of the universe, the dawn of the space age, 

the launch of Sputnik, missions to the Moon, robot landings on the terrestrial planets, 

and the exploration of the outer solar system. These developments in technology 

are illuminated by a rich historical context, highlighting how space exploration has 

changed and expanded our vision of the universe.” 

Roger D. Launius received the frst annual Roger R. Trask Award from the Society 

for History in the Federal Government (SHFG). The award is given in recognition of 

his commitment to federal history at NASA and the Smithsonian’s National Air and


Space Museum and for his promotion of the mission of the society and his generous 

mentoring of colleagues. The award was given at the 2009 SHFG conference in 

March, and Dr. Launius delivered the Keynote Inaugural Trask Award Lecture on 

the mission and challenges of federal history. The Roger R. Trask Award and Fund 

was established by SHFG as a ftting initiative to honor the memory and distinguished 

career of the late SHFG president and longtime federal history pioneer and 

mentor, Roger R. Trask. 

At the AAS’s Goddard Symposium in March, in Greenbelt, Maryland, Michael 

Neufeld, Division of Space History, received the Eugene M. Emme Award for 

Astronautical Literature for his Von Braun: Dreamer of Space, Engineer of War 

(2007). This spring it appeared in Danish and German translations: Von Braun: 

Krigsingeniør og rumfartsvisionær (Copenhagen: Schønberg, 2009) and Wernher von 

Braun: Visionär des Weltraums—Ingenieur des Krieges (Munich: Siedler, 2009). 

JohnAndersonandVonHardesty,AeronauticsDivision,edittheCambridgeUniversity 

Press Centennial of Flight series. In this series, Scott W. Palmer’s Dictatorship of the 

Air: Aviation Culture and the Fate of Modern Russia is now out in paperback. There 

is a new title as well: Michael B. Petersen, Missiles for the Fatherland: Peenemünde, 

National Socialism, and the V-2 Missile. Von Hardesty’s Epic Rivalry: The Inside Story 

of the Soviet and American Space Race (with Gene Eisman; National Geographic 

Books, 2007) has been translated into Russian under the title Istoriya kosmicheskogo 

sopernichestva SSSR i SShA (St. Petersburg: Piter, 2009). 

uPComing meetings 

The U.S. Army Center of Military History Biennial Conference, “Exiting War: 

Phase IV Operations” will be held 27–30 July 2009 in Washington, DC. Please visit 

http://www.history.army.mil/2009cah/index.html for more details. 

The Annual Meeting of the Society of American Archivists will be held 11–16 

August 2009 in Austin, Texas, at the Austin Hilton. Please see http://www.archivists. 

org/conference/index.asp for more details. 

The Annual Meeting of the Oral History Association, “Moving Beyond the Interview,” 

will be held 14–18 October 2009 in Louisville, Kentucky. Please see http://www. 

oralhistory.org/annual-meeting/ for more details. 

The Annual Meeting of the Society for the History of Technology will be held 15–19 

October 2009 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Please see http://www.historyoftechnology. 

org/annual_meeting.html#future_mtgs for more details. 

The fall Meeting of the Mid-Atlantic Regional Archives Conference will be held 

29–31 October 2009 in Jersey City, New Jersey. Please see http://www.lib.umd.edu/ 

MARAC/conferences/conferences.html for more details. 

The Annual Meeting of the History of Science Society will be held 18–22 November 

2009 in Phoenix, Arizona. Please see http://www.hssonline.org/ for more details. 

The AAS History Committee will host its Annual Meeting on 19 November 2009 in 

conjunction with the AAS National Conference at the Pasadena Hilton in Pasadena, 

California. Please see http://www.astronautical.org/events/ for more details. 

27


28 

oBituaries 

Konrad Dannenberg, 96 

Remembering Konrad Dannenberg 

By Frederick I. Ordway III 

At the invitation of Wernher von Braun, in early April 1956 I made my frst trip to 

Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville, Alabama. There, I was briefed on the missions 

of the newly created Army Ballistic Missile Agency (ABMA) whose Development 

Operations Division von Braun directed and was introduced to some of his key 

associates. I don’t recall if I met Dannenberg on that frst trip, or the second in 

May, or perhaps even the third in August. But I do know by the time my family 

and I had moved to Huntsville full time in mid-February 1957, we were already well 

acquainted. That was 52 years ago. 

My wife, children, and I settled into life atop Huntsville’s Monte Sano and before 

long had developed many friendships. Among the German families living on Monte 

Sano whom we soon got to know were Konrad and Ingeborg Dannenberg, Fred and 

Ruth von Saurma, Arthur and Martha Rudolph, Rudolf and Dorette Schlidt, Ernst 

and Irmgard Stuhlinger, Gerhard and Gisela Reisig, Eberhard and Gerlinde Rees, 

and Werner and Erica Rozinski. It was a wonderful community that welcomed those 

from far and wide who had made their home overlooking Huntsville, Alabama. 

That was the environment in which I frst got to know Konrad Dannenberg and learn 

something of his illustrious career. We also interacted in the offce environment at 

ABMA on Redstone Arsenal, attended Huntsville chapter meetings of the American 

Rocket Society (later, the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics) and 

other organizations, and occasionally at meetings of the International Astronautical 

Federation that were held in many parts of the world. 

I later learned Dannenberg was born on 5 August 1912 in Schloss Neu Augustusburg 

in Weissenfels, Prussian Saxony. His father, Heinrich Hermann Dannenberg, was a 

Feldwebel or master sergeant in the regular Prussian Army. Konrad’s mother was 

Klara Elisabeth Kittler. His younger sister, Elizabeth Sophie Hildegard, died of 

cancer during World War II. 

As a boy, Konrad was infuenced by amateur rocket experimenter Max Valier and 

automobile personality and rocket enthusiast Fritz von Opel. Valier’s Der Vorstoss in 

den Weltenraum (The Advance into Space) had frst appeared in 1924 and undergone 

fve printings before being enlarged and re-titled Raketenfahrt (Rocket Flight) in 

1930. Those books and a series on rocket-car and rocket-sled tests in 1928 at the 

Opel track near Ruesselsheim caught Dannenberg’s attention. In June and again in 

October, rocket railcar experiments were carried out, and about the same time rockets 

were attached to gliders at Redstock near Frankfurt. Clearly, rocketry was in the 

air, and young Konrad inhaled it with gusto, promptly joining a group of amateur 

rocket enthusiasts guided by Albert Puellenberg. 

Dannenberg enrolled in the Hannover Institute of Technology in 1931, but his 

studies were interrupted for a year while he trained in a motorized antitank 

company for the newly enlarged Reichswehr. A year later, he signed up for reserve


offcer training, meaning he would have to spend his summers on duty while 

continuing his engineering studies during the academic years. He rose to the rank 

of master sergeant. 

Having fulflled his military requirements, Dannenberg went on to graduate from 

the Hannover Institute of Technology in 1938, earning a Diploma Engineer (Dipl. 

Ing.) degree in mechanical engineering having specialized in combustion engineering. 

He remained for a year at the institute after graduation as assistant to his combustion-engineering 

professor, Dr. Kurt Neumann. From there, until the outbreak 

of World War II, he worked as a trainee at the VDO frm (Vereinigte Deuta-Ota) in 

Frankfurt-am-Main. 

As a reservist, Master Sergeant Dannenberg was soon called into active military 

service, reporting to duty in a horse-drawn antitank-gun unit. He was quickly 

promoted to lieutenant and saw action during the French campaign, on horseback! 

Meanwhile, his prewar VDO employer had requested his release from the Army to 

help convert its production lines from peacetime to wartime conditions. The request 

was granted, and Dannenberg returned to Frankfurt. 

But only temporarily. It turned out that his prewar amateur rocket colleague, Albert 

Puellenberg, had been hired by Captain Walter Dornberger of the Rocket Research 

and Development Center at Peenemünde on Germany’s Baltic Sea coast and invited 

Konrad to apply for a position. He did, and soon received an invitation for an 

interview with Dr. Walter Thiel. The interview went well, and Dannenberg ended 

up at Peenemünde in 1940, his training in combustion engineering about to be put 

to the test. 

Once settled in, Dannenberg learned that under Dornberger’s military organization 

was another erstwhile amateur rocket experimenter, the center’s technical director, 

Dr. Wernher von Braun. His rapidly growing rocket team was engaged in an array of 

projects, the most notable being the A4 ballistic missile. Dannenberg was assigned 

to Thiel’s A4 propulsion team and told to focus his talents on the rocket engine’s 

ignition system. On the 3 October 1942, the A4 made its frst successful test, reaching 

a range of 118 miles. Konrad would later reminisce that it was the most memorable 

fight in his career. 

With the end of the war, Dannenberg and 117 other Peenemünde colleagues wound 

up in Fort Bliss, Texas, as part of Project Paperclip. There, under von Braun’s 

technical direction, they continued work in the feld of rocketry, passing on their 

knowledge to U.S. Army Ordnance and contractor personnel. Twenty years after 

the Max Valier/Fritz von Opel trials of the late 1920s, Dannenberg found himself in 

a new country launching erstwhile military rockets for peaceful purposes. 

In 1950, the Fort Bliss rocket team was transferred to Redstone Arsenal just outside 

Huntsville in northern Alabama. There, Dannenberg applied his propulsion expertise 

to the Army’s 200-mileange Redstone rocket and later to the considerably larger 

Jupiter intermediate-range (1,600 miles) ballistic missile (IRBM). Both carried 

nuclear warheads. 

An experimental Jupiter IRBM fight that particularly pleased Dannenberg took 

place on 28 May 1959 during which two monkeys were lofted 300 miles into space 

and recovered in the Atlantic Ocean, surviving unharmed in their protective capsule. 


29


30 

Obituaries (continued) 

Dannenberg was closely involved in the conversion of the Redstone into the Jupiter-C 

three-stage reentry test vehicle that itself would evolve into the four-stage Juno I 

launch vehicle. On 30 September 1956, a Jupiter-C hurled a payload 3,400 miles 

down range from Cape Canaveral attaining a maximum altitude of 682 miles; on 

31 January 1958, a Juno I orbited Explorer 1, America’s frst artifcial satellite. 

Dannenberg’s thoughts must have gone back to those Max Valier and Fritz von Opel 

trials, marveling at the vital role he was playing 30 years later. 

To coordinate America’s blossoming space program, the National Aeronautics 

and Space Administration was created in 1958. By mid-1960, the new agency had 

acquired von Braun’s Army Ballistic Missile Agency rocket team at Redstone 

Arsenal. On dedication day, 1 July 1960, the team offcially became the nucleus of a 

brand new NASA facility, the George C. Marshall Space Flight Center, dedicated 

by President Dwight D. Eisenhower in the presence of Mrs. Marshall. The team’s 

military-missile responsibilities had passed on to the hands of others. Suddenly, the 

path lay open to the Moon and beyond. 

Konrad Dannenberg, ready for the change and eagerly plunging into the development 

of the Saturn series of launch vehicles, soon rose to the position of Deputy 

Manager. What became known as Saturn I evolved from studies of a Juno V booster 

that had been conducted at ABMA before its transfer to NASA. That design led 

to the development of the Saturn I launch vehicle, 10 of which were fown between 

October 1961 and July 1965 chalking up a 100 percent success record. 

The larger Saturn IB followed, and, between 1966 and 1968, four were tasked to 

check out the unpiloted Apollo Command and Service Module (CSM), including 

reentry into Earth’s atmosphere, and to monitor Apollo Lunar Module performance 

as well. Saturn IB launchers were also called upon to test the performance 

in Earth orbit of the piloted Apollo 7 CSM combination. During 1973 and 1974, 

the Saturn IBs transported three separate crews up to the Skylab space station; 

in 1975, the last one fown participated in the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project, a U.S./ 

Soviet joint program focused on rendezvous in Earth orbit. All nine Saturn IB 

fights were successful. 

Konrad Dannenberg’s most daunting challenge was the development and launching 

of giant Saturn V rockets; his decadesong experience was soon to be put to the 

ultimate test. In 1968, 40 years after the Valier/von Opel rocket demonstrations in 

Germany, two Saturn Vs were fown. The frst placed the uncrewed Apollo 6 into 

orbit around Earth where a series of tests were conducted before the Command 

Module successfully reentered the atmosphere. Then, on 21 December, another 

Saturn V sent Apollo 8 astronauts Frank Borman; James A. Lovell, Jr.; and William 

A. Anders along a circumlunar trajectory. Dannenberg was ecstatic and later 

declared it was the second most emotional fight witnessed during his career—right 

behind the frst successful A4 fown 26 years earlier. As in the case of the Saturn I 

and IB rockets, all 13 Saturn V fights were successful, making a grand total of 32 

launch vehicles in the Saturn series that were fown. Three fully restored Saturn Vs 

still exist and are on display at Kennedy Space Center, Cape Canaveral, Florida; 

at the U.S. Space & Rocket Center in Huntsville, Alabama; and at Johnson Space 

Center in Houston, Texas. 

In 1973, having received NASA’s Distinguished Service Medal for his work on the 

Saturn program, Konrad Dannenberg retired—at least from NASA. For fve years,


he taught at the University of Tennessee’s Space Institute in Tullahoma. During the 

1980s, 1990s, and into the 21st century, he lectured tirelessly to thousands of young 

people on the promise and wonders of spacefight, often to space campers at the U.S. 

Space & Rocket Center in Huntsville. He attended professional meetings, traveled, 

and wrote. At times his pace seemed without limit. 

Dannenberg was a fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, 

president on two occasions of its local Alabama/Mississippi section, and recipient 

of the 1990 Durand Lectureship and of the 1995 Hermann Oberth Award. 

Back in the mid-1970s he had joined the L-5 Society that later merged with the 

National Space Institute, whose frst president was Wernher von Braun, to become 

the National Space Society. The merger broadened Konrad Dannenberg to new 

audiences nationwide. 

I’ll describe briefy a few episodes that we shared in recent years. During much 

of 2003, we collaborated with Werner K. Dahm, Walter Haeussermann, Gerhard 

Reisig, Ernst Stuhlinger, Georg von Tiesenhausen, and Irene Willhite on a lecture 

entitled “A Memoir: From Peenemünde to USA: A Classic Case of Technology 

Transfer” that I had the honor of presenting at the 54th International Astronautical 

Congress in Bremen, Germany. For the next couple of years we expanded the lecture 

into a professional paper, under the same title, published in the International 

Academy of Astronautics’ journal Acta Astronautica (60, 2007, pages 24–47). 

On 29 September and 4 October 2004, Mike Melville and Brian Binnie piloted 

SpaceShipOne within a prescribed two-week period to an altitude of more than 100 

kilometers. Those feats led to the winning for Scaled Composites creator-designerbuilder 

Burt Rutan the $10 million Ansari X Prize. Dannenberg had earlier visited 

Mojave to witness a test fight on 21 June 2004 and declared it to be the third most 

exciting fight in his long career in rocketry. Returning home, he later e-mailed 

Rutan that “. . . I was present when the Space Age opened about 62 years ago in 

Peenemünde with the frst successful launch of an A4/V2. I had also observed the 

frst two failed launches, and was aware of the big step we made at that time. It is for 

me still today the most impressive launch I ever saw . . . I believe your forthcoming 

launch of SpaceShipOne will be in the same category.” That June test fight and the 

award-winning fights a few months later led to an informal Dannenberg-Rutan 

mutual admiration society solidifed by reciprocal visits to and from Huntsville and 

Mojave, California. 

In recognition of the triumph, on the 19 May 2005, Dannenberg and I presented 

Burt Rutan with the National Space Society’s Wernher von Braun Memorial Award 

at the International Space Development Conference in Washington, DC. Following 

his remarks, Dannenberg handed to Rutan a scale replica of an early von Braun 

ferry rocket concept mounted beside a scale model of the Saturn V with engraved 

wording. For my part, I gave him He Conquered Space, a Discovery Channel biography 

of Wernher von Braun on which I had worked, its DVD boxed and inscribed 

by Discovery Founder and Chairman John S. Hendricks. Finally, I presented the 

awardee a boxed edition of Ernst Stuhlinger’s and my two-volume biography entitled 

Wernher von Braun: Crusader for Space published by Krieger (with inscriptions by 

the authors and publisher). I observed the obvious pleasure Dannenberg and Rutan 

demonstrated; like minds bind! 


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Then there was the 50th-anniversary celebration of the launching and orbiting of 

Explorer 1, America’s frst artifcial satellite, an event especially dear to Dannenberg. 

In the unexpected absence of Ernst Stuhlinger due to illness, Dannenberg was the 

only “old-timer” on a retrospective panel that National Space Society executive 

director George Whitesides and I chaired on 31 January 2008 at the Von Braun 

Center in downtown Huntsville. Following an introduction by overall event coordinator 

Ralph Petroff—there were other panels—our panel got to work. Its members 

were Steven J. Dick, NASA Chief Historian; Roger D. Launius, Senior Curator 

at the National Air and Space Museum; and Dwayne Day, Space Studies Board, 

National Academies of Science. Our special panel guest that day was Natalya 

Koroleva, daughter of Sergei Korolev, von Braun’s counterpart in the Soviet Union 

and father of the Sputnik satellite series. 

That evening, we all adjourned to the brand new Davidson Center for Space 

Exploration at the U.S. Space & Rocket Center, where the celebration continued 

for hours under the horizontally mounted, fully restored Saturn V-500 D/F. No 

one was more wide awake than Konrad Dannenberg when, accompanied by his 

devoted wife Jackie, he was presented a special Explorer 1 award by Major General 

James R. Myles, commander of the U.S. Army Aviation and Missile Command. 

One often forgets that Explorer 1 was the creation of the Army Ballistic Missile 

Agency; the fight occurred 2½ years before von Braun’s rocket team became part 

of NASA. 

The last time I saw my friend Konrad was in Huntsville during a visit tied to 

a 7 February 2009 Year of Apollo gala banquet in the same Davidson Center. 

Knowing that Dannenberg had counted on participating, I was disheartened to 

learn that he was hospitalized. I visited him at his bedside in Huntsville Hospital 

the next morning and found him pale and weak. Learning from Jackie that he 

was to be released to a rehab center, I shared some optimism and was pleasantly 

surprised when I visited him the afternoon of the 12th, the day before my return to 

Washington. He seemed a different person, looking forward to rehab procedures 

and changing to a new room. 

But it was not to be. Four days later, my friend of more than half a century departed 

this Earth forever. 

Konrad Dannenberg is survived by his second wife of 18 years, Jacquelyn Staiger, 

whom he had married in Plymouth, Massachusetts, on 31 March 1990; his son Klaus; 

daughter-in-law Betty; and two grand- and four great-grandchildren. Dannenberg’s 

frst wife, Ingeborg, died in 1988; they had married in Zinnowitz, Germany, near 

Peenemünde, in early April 1944. 

Acknowledgments 

I am deeply appreciative to Konrad Dannenberg’s wife Jackie and his son Klaus for 

critically reviewing the text, flling in blanks, and patiently answering questions. To 

them, Brenda Carr, Ray Cronise, and Ralph Petroff go my sincere thanks for helping 

locate photographs; in the case of the Cronise image of Dannenberg and Burt Rutan 

together, it is copyright 2004. To NASA chief historian Steven Dick, I express my 

gratitude for inviting me to remember a friend and colleague of over half a century, 

Konrad Dannenberg.


Memories of Konrad Dannenberg 

By George S. James, Department of Energy 

I frst met Konrad Dannenberg in the summer of 1950 when I went to work at the 

North American Aerophysics Laboratory (NAA) in Downey, California. Imagine 

my surprise and pleasure to be working on the U.S. Air Force Navaho project with 

an individual from Peenemünde, who actually helped develop the V-2, one of my 

great interests. 

Four summers earlier, I had spent many a lunch hour at the Caltech Jet Propulsion 

Laboratory examining the complete V-2 that was located on its side near a large oak 

tree. I had been fortunate to have a summer job there through the assistance of Dr. 

Frank Malina and Dr. Theodore von Karman. 

Moreover, less than month into my JPL job, I had to request a two-week leave 

because, as the representative of our young Rocket Research Institute (RRI), I 

received an invitation from the U.S. Army to witness the launch of V-2 s/n 6 on 28 

June 1946 at White Sands. 

After an uninspiring bus trip from Los Angeles to Las Cruces, the most spectacular, 

awe-inspiring, successful V-2 fight was an event that I will never forget, particularly 

since the other spectators and I were “behind the fence” only 1,000 feet from the V-2 

as it ignited and majestically rose, with an earhattering roar, into the clear blue New 

Mexico sky forming a white corkscrew vapor trail. 

As Dannenberg had belonged to a student rocketry group in the late 1920s, and as I 

had been involved with the Rocket Research Institute since 1943, we shared a com 

mon thread of enthusiasm at NAA that summer in 1950. 

Konrad Dannenberg and Dr. Walter Reidel III, both among the 117 engineers and 

scientists from Peenemünde who wound up at Fort Bliss, Texas, as a result of Project 

Paperclip, were part of the NAA team members responsible for evolving from the 

56,000-pound-hrust V-2 rocket engine system a brand new design of 75,000-pound 

thrust for the MX-770 Navaho missile. By the time I arrived at NAA, initial fullscale 

static fring tests of the new engine had been conducted at the Santa Susana 

facility. Subsequently, this engine became the propulsion system for the Redstone 

because an even higher thrust engine was required for the scaled-up Navaho. 

My joy of working with “real rocket engine engineers” came to a halt when, on 22 

September 1950, I was drafted into the U.S. Army for the Korean War. After basic 

training at Fort Ord, California, I was assigned to the Army’s Special Professional 

Personnel Program and, in early January 1951, reported to the Army Chemical 

Center in Edgewood, Maryland. 

On a subsequent leave from Edgewood to my home in Glendale, California, in May 

1951, I stopped by the NAA to visit with Konrad. In the course of our conversa 

tion, he mentioned that the Fort Bliss Peenemünde group had been transferred to 

Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville, Alabama, to work on development of the Redstone 

ballistic missile. 

With his suggestion and the help of many others, I was extremely fortunate to 

report in September 1951 to the U.S. Army, 9330 Technical Service Unit, stationed 

at Redstone Arsenal. Here I worked with a number of Dannenberg’s colleagues, 

including Kurt Debus, Krafft Ehricke, Hans Heuter, Eberhard Rees, Rudolf Schlidt, 


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Ernst Stuhlinger, and also Wernher von Braun on virtually a daily basis in preparing 

Redstone reports and other materials. 

The high priority and secret classifcation of the Redstone program was necessary 

because in the frst years of the Korean War complete air superiority over Korea 

could not be assured. Consequently, if the delivery of a nuclear weapon were to have 

been authorized, the Redstone was to be the absolutely MiG-proof method of doing 

so. We all prayed in our hearts that such a need would never be necessary. 

I switched, upon being discharged from the Army on 22 September 1952, to the 

U.S. Civil Service (same job), until December when I received a scholarship (applied 

for early in 1950) to study with Frank Lloyd Wright at his School of Architecture 

to learn how he was uniquely applying modern technology to create residences 

that were in harmony with nature, now called sustainable, for families in beautiful 

environmental settings. 

My decision to leave the Redstone team was upsetting to Dr. von Braun. “Why do 

you wish to leave us to study with such an old man?” Mr. Wright was then 84. Years 

later, when I saw von Braun here in Washington, DC, he said, “I now understand 

Mr. James; we will need architects on the moon.” 

The next opportunity I had to visit with Mr. Dannenberg was not until years later 

when my wife and I attended the ceremony in Huntsville honoring those who had 

worked on the Redstone Missile program. By then, the Redstone had demonstrated 

an important peacetime use in the Mercury-Redstone launching of NASA astronaut 

Alan Shepard on the frst U.S. piloted suborbital fight on 5 May 1961. 

In October 1993, Konrad presented a paper, “Rocket Center Peenemünde; Personal 

Memories,” which he and Ernst Stuhlinger had prepared, at the 44th International 

Astronautical Congress in Graz, Austria; Graz also was the home of the famous 

rocket mail pioneer, Friedrich Schmiedl. I asked Karlheinz Rohrwild, the Curator 

of the Hermann Oberth Spacefight Museum, in Feucht, Germany, and a member of 

our IAA History Group, to try to call Mr. Schmiedl and see if we could visit him. To 

our delight, Mr. Schmiedl said yes. 

It was the realization of a dream to actually meet the gentleman whose work had so 

inspired me in my early years. Karlheinz and I were accompanied by Elmar Wild, an 

associate of his at the Oberth Museum, and Herve Moulin, President of HMI, Paris, 

France. Unfortunately, Konrad was not able to attend what became the frst of two 

meetings with Mr. Schmiedl that week. 

During the frst visit, on 17 October, Karlheinz served as translator. It was such a 

pleasure to meet Mr. Schmiedl and to fnd that he was still so alert and active at 

91. We learned much new information about his rocket mail experiments, which 

had achieved worldwide publicity in 1931. Karlheinz, whose museum is dedicated 

to the lifework of the German rocket pioneer, Hermann Oberth (1894–1989), was 

particularly interested in Mr. Schmiedl’s accounts of his pre-World War II meetings 

with Professor Oberth. Mr. Schmiedl was extremely gracious and invited us back 

later during the week. 

For the second visit, Mr. Dannenberg was able to accompany us, along with Frank 

Winter of the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum. Mr. Schmiedl, in his 

discussions with Konrad and our group, told us of his involvement with the founding


of the Austrian Rocket Society in 1926 that preceded the more publicized formation 

of the German Rocket Society in 1927, and about his engineering career. Also, we 

learned about the early days of rocketry in Austria prior to the takeover by Germany 

and the subsequent demise of Mr. Schmiedl’s Austrian experimental activities. At 

the time of our meeting, he was Austria’s oldest living rocket mail and space pioneer 

who had personally experienced these events. 

During our long friendship, Mr. Dannenberg had mentioned that he had worked 

with Dr. Walter Thiel at Peenemünde. Consequently, at my request early in 2005, he 

graciously wrote an introductory paragraph on Dr. Thiel’s contributions to the V-2 

propulsion system, for the cover photo of Dr. Thiel and two associates standing in 

front of a V-2 in 1942 at Peenemünde, for the cover of the 1997 Proceedings of the 

31st History Symposium of the International Academy of Astronautics. 

The last time I had the opportunity to spend time with Konrad was 20 March 2005. 

My wife and I had lunch with him and his son Klaus at Reagan National Airport 

prior to Mr. Dannenberg’s fight back to Huntsville. The previous evening he and 

Fred Ordway had presented to Burt Rutan, the founder of Scaled Composites, the 

National Space Society’s Wernher von Braun Memorial Award at the International 

Space Development Conference in Washington, DC, for the SpaceShipOne team in 

achieving an altitude of more than 100 kilometers within the prescribed two-week 

Ansari X Prize period the previous year and thus winning that competition. 

We talked about Mr. Rutan, who had become a good friend on Konrad’s, and how 

his pioneering civilian achievement had given even greater emphasis to our mutual 

interest in student space-science-related programs such as the exemplary motivational 

activities in which he had involved himself through the U.S. Space & Rocket 

Center in Huntsville. 

Over the next four years, Fred Ordway was my principal source of information 

on Mr. Dannenberg. Then, on 15 December 2008, I met in Washington, DC, with 

Ralf Heckel, Chairman of the German Space Education Institute (SEI), along with 

his wife, Yvonne, and their young daughter, Cosma. The SEI is one of the youthoriented 

space education organizations that Mr. Dannenberg supported. They had 

just returned from Huntsville helping organize next year’s NASA Moon-Buggy 

competition. The video they gave me included showing Konrad, looking as great as 

ever, participating in the 50th-anniversary celebration of the launching and orbiting 

of Explorer 1, America’s frst artifcial satellite, at the brand new Davidson Center 

for Space Exploration at the U.S. Space & Rocket Center on 31 January 2008. 

A little over a year later, on Monday, 16 February, when I turned on my e-mail at 

work, there was a note from Kerrie Dougherty, of our International Academy of 

Astronautics History Group, that Konrad Dannenberg had passed away. It was 

sad notice. Not only had I lost a good friend that I had known for 59 years, but the 

space community had lost a brilliant engineer and a most active advocate of space 

exploration and its future. 


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Photos of Konrad Dannenberg 

Dannenberg as a student at the Hannoverische 

Hoch Schule (Hannover Institute of Technology), 

circa 1934–35. Courtesy: Klaus Dannenberg. 

Dannenberg dressed for a television interview on 

22 December 2008. Courtesy: Jackie Dannenberg. 

Photograph taken in Germany in 1945, just before 

Dannenberg left for the United States with fellow 

von Braun rocket team members assigned to 

Project Paperclip. Courtesy: Klaus Dannenberg.

Left to right, Karlheinz Rohrwild, George James, Konrad Dannenberg, 

Friedrich Schmiedl, and Frank Winter are standing in the doorway of Mr. 

Schmiedl’s house in Graz, Austria, October 1993. The model rocket, in front of 

Mr. Dannenberg, was received by Mr. Schmiedl from a group of Austrian space 

enthusiasts. Photo Credit: Elmar Wild/RRI Archives. 



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Major General James R. Myles, commanding general of the U.S. Army 

Aviation and Missile Command, Redstone Arsenal, Alabama, presents 

Konrad Dannenberg the Explorer 1 Award on the 50th-anniversary gala 

celebration of the satellite’s reaching orbit on 31 January 1958. The ceremony 

took place at the Davidson Center for Space Exploration, part of the U.S. 

Space & Rocket Center on 31 January 2008. Courtesy: Emmett Given, 

Marshall Space Flight Center. 

Photograph of Dannenberg used for publicity 

purposes during the 1959–60 period when the 

Wernher von Braun rocket team transferred 

from the Army Ballistic Missile Agency to the 

new George C. Marshall Space Flight Center. 

Courtesy: Klaus Dannenberg.


“America in Space January 31, 1958 50th Anniversary” was the title of the U.S. Space & Rocket Center 

Huntsville/Madison County Chamber of Commerce celebration of the 50th anniversary of the orbiting 

of Explorer 1 50 years earlier. Here, at the Remembering Explorer 1 Panel at the Von Braun Center in 

Huntsville, a model of Explorer 1 is held up by, left to right, panel chairman Frederick I. Ordway III, panel 

member Konrad Dannenberg, and panel cochairman George Whitesides. At the far left at the podium is 

Ralph Petroff, overall symposium organizer, and next to the full-scale model of Sputnik I stands Natalya 

Koroleva, the daughter of the satellite’s designer, Sergei Korolev. Courtesy: Ralph Petroff. 

This photograph was taken at the October 2004 Alabama Information 

Technology Association annual meeting in Birmingham. The 

highlight of the occasion was Dannenberg’s accepting the frst Genesis 

Award for Lifetime Achievement on behalf of Wernher von Braun 

and members of his rocket team. His 5-minute thank-you oration 

deeply impressed the audience. At the same gathering, Dannenberg’s 

astronaut friend and colleague Walter “Wally” M. Schirra, Jr., gave a 

stirring lecture. Courtesy: Jackie Dannenberg. 


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Konrad Dannenberg chatting with Burt Rutan at the Voyager restaurant in Mojave, 

California, on 22 June 2004, the day after the successful test fight of Rutan’s SpaceShipOne. 

Copyright 2004 by Raymond Cronise. 

On 4 October 2007, the 50th anniversary of the orbiting of Sputnik I by the Soviet Union, a group of 

space veterans gathered to celebrate the occasion at the Davidson Center for Space Exploration, part 

of the U.S. Space & Rocket Center, in Huntsville, Alabama. Here they stand, under the shadow of the 

recently restored Saturn V-500 D/F with a full-scale Sputnik I model in the foreground. The group 

reasoned that if it were not for that Sputnik, there might not have been a space race, and the U.S. might 

not have developed the Saturn V to power astronauts to the Moon between 1968 and 1972. From left to 

right: Konrad Dannenberg, Homer Hickam, William Lucas, Ernst Stuhlinger, and Julian Davidson. 

Courtesy: Al Whitaker, U.S. Space & Rocket Center.

Eilene Galloway, 102 


By Rebecca Wright, history coordinator, Johnson Space Center 

Since the dawn of the Space Age, Eilene Galloway helped to ensure peace in outer 

space. For more than 50 years, her wisdom infuenced policies and treaties to enable 

an international cooperation for space exploration. She authored more than 100 

works refecting her knowledge of space law, technology, broadcast satellites, tele 

communications, national security, and international relations. 

Two days before her 103rd birthday, Eilene Galloway passed away at her home in 

Washington, DC. 

During her lifetime, she shared her expertise on topics ranging from Sputnik to the 

International Space Station, and most recently, she addressed the issues of space law 

relating to the nation’s quest of returning to the Moon and then traveling on to Mars. 

Evident throughout this extensive collection of publications, lectures, policies, and 

papers is her belief that only peaceful and benefcial uses of outer space should prevail. 

Galloway began her illustrious career at a time when there was no space policy. She 

started working in 1941 with the Congressional Research Service of the Library of 

Congress, then known as the Legislative Reference Service, as a National Defense 

Analyst and later as a Senior Specialist in National Security. Her numerous House 

and Senate documents received a great deal of attention from the legislators, espe 

cially her report on “Guided Missiles in Foreign Countries.” 

Her career took a defnite turn on Friday, 4 October 1957, when the Soviet Union 

captured the world’s attention by launching Sputnik. Early on the following Monday 

morning, she answered a phone call from Senator Lyndon B. Johnson. Immediately, 

she became a special consultant to him and Congressman John W. McCormack 

for the congressional hearings that set the foundation for the nation’s entry into the 

space race. 

As part of these efforts, Galloway assisted in writing the legislation passed 

by Congress on 29 July 1958 to establish the National Aeronautics and Space 

Administration (NASA). She contributed particularly to the provisions for inter 

national space cooperation. She continued working closely with Johnson—then the 

U.S. Senate Majority Leader—as he prepared to represent the United States at the 

United Nations Assembly in November 1958. His message urged the international 

membership to create an ad hoc Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space 

(COPUOS). While attending this historic session with him, Galloway witnessed 

the creation of COPUOS that within a year would become a United Nations (U.N.) 

permanent committee. 

Galloway returned to Washington, DC, after the U.N. meeting and wrote a 593-page 

document on space law for the Senate that was published on 31 December 1958. 

Subsequently, she served as a representative from the U.S. in the drafting of U.N. 

treaties including the Outer Space Treaty. Ratifed by 98 nations, since 1967, this 

treaty has served as the foundation to govern the exploration and utilization of outer 

space and sparked the feld of international space law. 

For fve decades, agencies and organizations throughout the world sought guidance 

from Eilene Galloway, who believed her main qualifcation was that she was not afraid 

of any assignment. Her words impacted a prestigious collection of decision-makers. 


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She advised the U.S. Senate Committee on Aeronautical and Space Sciences for 

almost 20 years. She worked with the U.S. Department of State and its U.N. delegation 

regarding utilization of satellites, remote sensing, and space law. She served 

on numerous NASA advisory committees, as recently as 2003, and assisted the 

Federal Communications Commission. She consulted on the scientifc aspects of 

space technology and policy with the United Nations; the National Academy of 

Sciences; the National Academy of Engineering; the United States Civil Service 

Commission; the U.S. House Committee on Science and Technology, Offce of 

Technology Assessment; and the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, 

and Transportation. 

Galloway participated in professional societies and numerous symposia and 

chaired panels sponsored by prominent institutions and organizations. These 

include the European Space Agency, the United Nations University, the Center 

for Peace Studies, the Institute of Air and Space Law, Purdue University, George 

Washington Law School, the International Studies Association, the Federal Bar 

Association, the John Basset Moore Society of International Law, and McGill 

University in Montreal, Canada. 

She held positions of leadership in the Association of U.S. Members of the 

International Institute of Space Law, the International Astronautical Federation 

Committee for Liaison with the United Nations, the International Academy of 

Astronautics, and the United States Group of the Interparliamentary Union. 

She served as the vice president of the International Institute of Space Law of the 

International Astronautical Federation from 1967 to 1979, when she was elected 

honorary director. In 1958, Galloway was among those creating this institute that 

serves as a forum for scholars and others to debate legal issues on the aspects of 

space exploration and utilization. Annually, this group meets for its colloquium 

and conducts the Manfred Lachs Space Law Moot Court Competition. Members of 

the International Court of Justice, The Hague, decide the winners, who receive the 

Eilene M. Galloway Award for the Best Brief. 

This pioneer of the Space Age was born on 4 May 1906 as Eilene Marie Slack in 

Kansas City, Missouri. After graduating from Westport High School, she was 

awarded a four-year scholarship to Washington University in St. Louis. There 

in 1923, she met her future husband, George Barnes Galloway. The next year, he 

completed his master’s degree in political science, and they married and moved to 

Washington, DC. Soon after, they moved to Pennsylvania, where Galloway completed 

her college education with high honors at Swarthmore College in 1928. She 

taught political science the next two years at Swarthmore before they returned to 

Washington, where she was a resident for more than 75 years. 

Galloway began her career in public service as the nation was beginning its recovery 

from the Great Depression. From 1934 to 1935, she worked for the Federal Emergency 

Relief Administration Division of Adult Education. Following this effort, Galloway 

served as a volunteer board member for the Family Service Association and also 

concentrated on promoting adult education in DC. She compiled a directory with all 

classes available to residents, including music, law, history, economics, performing 

arts, and mathematics. Galloway had a committee, offce space, and assistance from 

the DC Adult Education Offce, but she needed a way to distribute the directory. She 

personally requested help from Eugene Meyer, owner of the Washington Post, who


refused, so she solicited 125,000 requests for the information. With this immense 

interest, the Post reversed its decision and published the information, as well as a 

second printing of similar size. 

She worked for the Library of Congress for 34 years as an expert in national defense, 

international relations, space, and astronautics until her retirement in 1975. She 

then shared her expertise for the next 30 years, traveling throughout the world as 

an independent consultant in international space activities and resolving problems 

concerned with the impact of science and technology on society. 

Until 2004, Galloway served as an active participant in the creation of interna 

tional space policy and space law. At the age of 98, she gave the keynote address at 

the international/national meeting of the American Institute of Aeronautics and 

Astronautics (AIAA), and the year before, she spoke at the International Air and 

Space Symposium. In March 2009, she published an article in Space News titled 

“Space Law for a Moon-Mars Program.” 

Many honors were awarded to Galloway, including recognition by the U.S. House 

of Representatives, on her 100th birthday. Calling her a distinguished American, 

Congress commended Galloway for her tireless work as an active participant in 

space policy and space law debates for almost a half century, while serving as a 

valuable resource to researchers and the media on historical and current space 

policy issues and mentoring new members of the communities associated with space 

exploration and utilization. 

Also on the centennial of her birthday, the American Astronautical Society pre 

sented her its President’s Award to recognize her distinguished career and her 

profound contributions to the exploration and development of space. The Institute 

and Center of Air and Space Law and McGill University saluted her outstanding 

merits by dedicating the 2006 issue of the Annals of Air and Space Law in her honor. 

Accolades for her outstanding works include the Public Service Award and Medal 

from the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics for her “instrumental 

role in formulating space legislation and guiding its implementation.” Other tributes 

include the National Aeronautic Association’s Katharine Wright Memorial Trophy, 

which honors a woman who has made a personal contribution to the advancement 

of aviation over an extended time. Galloway received the honor for “her infuential 

role in the US space program since its inception and for developing international 

standards for activities in space through the UN and other organizations, and for 

outstanding contributions over forty-fve years advising Congress on the legal and 

policy aspects of outer space serving the United Nations on the Peaceful Uses of 

Outer Space and developing international space law.” 

The International Astronautical Federation, International Institute of Space Law, 

awarded her with the Andrew G. Haley Gold Medal for Space Law for her work as 

an “author, lecturer, editor and commentator in connection with the creation and 

development of space law in order to establish and maintain the rule of law in rela 

tion to mankind’s activities in Outer Space.” Galloway’s “lifetime of contributions 

to study the legal, social and scientifc aspects of astronautics and the advancement 

of the peaceful uses of outer space” earned her the Theodore von Karman Award 

from the International Academy of Astronautics. Women in Aerospace honored 

her with its Lifetime Achievement Award and called her a “national treasure who 

has pioneered the understanding of the complexities of domestic and international 


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space policy.” NASA presented her a Public Service Award and Gold Medal and 

Lifetime Achievement Award, as well as an American fag that few on the Space 

Shuttle Endeavour on the frst element launch of the International Space Station in 

December 1999. 

The Cologne University Institute of Air and Space Law and German Aerospace 

Center Award was presented to Galloway, and she received the American 

Astronautical Society’s John F. Kennedy Astronautics Award for “outstanding contributions 

for over more than 40 years of outer space service to the United Nations 

Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space and the development of space law.” 

In 1995, she was one of a select group of experts invited to the United Nations to 

speak during the celebration of its 50th anniversary; she spoke on “The Role of the 

United Nations in Outer Space: Organization and Management.” 

In May 2005, she was selected as honorary fellow by the AIAA for serving as “advisor 

to Congress and NASA and for legendary work in helping to create NASA, 

fostering international cooperation and championing the peaceful uses of outer 

space.” Additional honors and affliations include honorary doctor of laws degrees 

from her alma mater, Swarthmore College, and from Lake Forest College; honorary 

membership in the Lunar Society of International Law; honorary director of the 

International Institute of Space Law; member of the Journal of Space Law editorial 

advisory board, University of Mississippi Law School; Trustee Emeritus of the 

International Academy of Astronautics; and former president of the Theodore von 

Karman Memorial Foundation, Inc. 

She has been included in the Who’s Who in America, Who’s Who of American 

Women, Who’s Who in Science and Engineering, and Who’s Who in the World, 

whose individuals have “demonstrated outstanding achievement in their own felds 

of endeavor and who have, thereby, contributed signifcantly to the betterment 

of contemporary society.” She was also a member of Phi Beta Kappa and Kappa 

Alpha Theta; a former Swarthmore College Alumni Council member; and longtime 

member of St. Albans’ Episcopal Church, Washington, DC. 

Galloway’s family members include her son, Dr. Jonathan F. Galloway, former 

professor emeritus of international relations at Lake Forest College; six grandchildren: 

Pamela Eilene Galloway, Dr. Gillian Q. Galloway, Christopher B. Galloway, 

Matthew W. Galloway, Jennifer Margaret Decker, and Annie Collier Galloway; and 

fve great-grandchildren: Trevor B. Galloway, Carrah R. Galloway, Galen Galloway, 

Gabriel David Galloway, and Maitri Eilene Galloway Melichar. She was preceded 

in death by her husband, Dr. George Barnes Galloway, the foremost expert on the 

U.S. Congress, and their son, David Barnes Galloway, who served as editor of the 

Los Angeles Times, Costa Mesa, California.

Photos of Eilene Galloway 

Eilene Galloway in her home. 

NASA Chief Archivist Jane Odom (left), Eilene 

Galloway, and Johnson Space Center History 

Coordinator Rebecca Wright. 


Eilene Galloway and NASA Chief Historian 

Steven Dick. 

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an evening with dr. aBdul kalam 

By Ashok Maharaj, Ph.D. candidate in history, Georgia Institute of Technology 

It was on an icy cold evening in early February 2009 that I had an appointment with 

Dr. Abdul Kalam, the 11th president of independent India and a key player in the 

development of the Indian space and missile program. “Vanakkam [‘greetings’ in the 

Tamil language],” I said as I entered his New Delhi offce. Kalam, an accomplished 

scientist and what historians of technology like to call a “heterogeneous engineer,” 

achieved iconic status in his native country after leading the development of guided 

missiles and the indigenous satellite launch vehicle (SLV) project. In April 2009, he 

became the frst Asian to receive the Hoover Medal, given annually since 1930 by 

the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME). In a land of more than a 

billion people, I considered myself extremely fortunate to be spending an evening 

interviewing Dr. Kalam about NASA’s cooperation with India over the last 50 years. 

NASA’s cooperation with India began in the early 1960s with tracking stations and 

esoteric space sciences. Cognizant of the contributions made by Indian scientists in the 

felds of astronomy and meteorology, a tradition that stretches over several decades, 

NASA offcials outlined a cooperative program focused on mutual exploration of the 

tropical space for scientifc data. The cooperation began with the loaning of sounding 

rockets and launchers and with the training of Indian scientists and engineers at select 

NASA facilities. Kalam was one of those handpicked by Vikram Sarabhai, the father 

of India’s space program, for NASA training. Later, in the mid-1970s, NASA and 

India collaborated on an experimental project called Satellite Instructional Television 

Experiment (SITE). Touted as a massive experiment in social engineering, the project 

was hailed by some, including British science fction writer Arthur C. Clarke, as the 

greatest communications experiment in history. However, NASA’s relationship with 

India was not uniform but ebbed and fowed according to the shifting geopolitical 

realities of the Cold War. More recently, this relationship has stabilized, allowing for


new successes, such as Chandrayaan I, an Indian-led scientifc data collection mission 

that carried two NASA-built instruments on its maiden voyage to the Moon. It was a 

proud moment for NASA to see the maturation of a space program that it helped to 

found with the Indian scientifc elite in the early 1960s. 

Dr. Kalam’s training in the early 1960s spanned three NASA facilities: Langley 

Research Center (LaRC) in Hampton, Virginia; Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) 

in Greenbelt, Maryland; and Wallops Flight Facility at Wallops Island, located on 

Virginia’s Eastern Shore. In his autobiography, Wings of Fire, Kalam recalls seeing 

a painting, prominently displayed in the Wallops reception room, depicting Tipu 

Sultan’s army fghting the British. “The painting depicted a fact forgotten in Tipu’s 

own country but commemorated here on the other side of the planet. I was happy to 

see an Indian glorifed by NASA as a hero of warfare rocketry.” 1 Kalam could never 

have imagined at that time that he would later become the next “Tipu” of India to 

build guided missiles. His NASA training made possible the frst sounding rocket 

launch on 21 November 1963 from the Thumba Equatorial Rocket Launch Station 

(TERLS) in southern India. Soon after the launch, Kalam noted, “Many individuals 

with myopic vision questioned the relevance of space activities in a newly independent 

nation which was fnding it diffcult to feed its population. But neither Prime Minister 

Nehru nor Professor Sarabhai had any ambiguity of purpose: if Indians were to play 

a meaningful role in the community of nations, they must be second to none in the 

application of advanced technologies to their real-life problems.” 2 

It was close to 10 p.m. when I fnished my interview with Dr. Kalam. “Nandri 

[Thanks],” I said before departing, and he whispered to come again. 

lunar orBiter image resCue and the 

nasa headquarters history oFFiCe 

By Philip Horzempa, Historian, LeMoyne College 

The recent visit to the Lunar Orbiter Image Recovery Project (LOIRP) operations 

area at Ames Research Center completes a circle for the History Offce personnel 

from NASA Headquarters The image rescue operation was begun thanks to the 

work of that very staff. 

In late 2004, I was conducting research at the NASA Headquarters History Division, 

reviewing fles. To my amazement, I came across a copy of a proposal to rescue and 

digitize the lunar orbiter image tapes! As the old adage states, “Chance favors the 

prepared mind.” In this case, I knew how important the document was. However, I 

never would have had the chance without the efforts of the team at the History Offce. 

Through the years, they have been diligent in their efforts to preserve many of the 

original memos, proposals, reports, articles, and photos from myriad NASA missions. 

1. Tipu Sultan was killed in 1799 in the Battle of Burukhanahally, a battle in which the British captured 

more than 700 Indian rockets and 900 rocket subsystems. These rockets were taken to England by William 

Congreve and were subjected by the British to what we today call reverse engineering. See A. P. J. Abdul 

Kalam and Arun Tiwari, Wings of Fire: An Autobiography (Hyderabad: Universities Press, 1999), p. 38. 

2. Ibid., p. 43. 


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48 

Lunar Orbiter Image Rescue and the NASA Headquarters History Offce (continued) 

In this case, the History Division produced a new NASA project, the LOIRP. 

The proposal I happened upon was authored by an engineer named Mark Nelson. 

He and his partner, Nancy Evans, had endeavored to preserve not only the tapes 

of the lunar orbiters’ downlink, but also a collection of old equipment (tape players, 

tape heads) that were critical to extracting the information from those tapes. 

Without the Ampex FR-900 equipment, the lunar orbiter tapes would be unreadable 

and useless. 

It took me some time to track down Mark Nelson, as his proposal was about 10 years 

old. When I eventually made contact with him, we decided to make another go at 

procuring funding for the project. That task took another couple of years, but succeeded 

as the result of another chance event. Comments I had posted on an Internet 

chat room about the lunar orbiter tapes caught the attention of Dennis Wingo, a 

seasoned space entrepreneur. Dennis and I made contact and made plans for him 

to meet Mark Nelson and Nancy Evans. Pete Worden, the Director of ARC, also 

helped immensely when he provided a space where the old tapes could be transferred 

from JPL, and the tape equipment moved from the care of Nelson and Evans. This 

“Operations Center” is an old McDonald’s restaurant located next to ARC. A key 

beneft of working at the site is the air conditioning is still operational. In addition, it 

is a stone’s throw away from the new Lunar Science Institute at ARC. 

Dennis Wingo has been able to secure funding for the LOIRP, and he is now leading 

the effort at the “McMoon” site to refurbish the old tape equipment and read the 

old lunar orbiter tapes. There are 2,000 “landscape quality” photos stored on those 

tapes. They cover the entire surface of the Moon in exquisite detail. 

There are many threads of history wrapped up in this saga. Through the preservation 

of the record of the lunar orbiter program, the NASA History Offce has enabled an 

effort to restore the historic photographs from those missions. The images produced 

by the fve lunar orbiter spacecraft mapped the entire Moon for the frst time during 

the years 1966–67. These images were used to produce the frst global map of 

another world. This also meant that the far side of the Moon was revealed, in detail, 

for the frst time (earlier Soviet missions had produced only low-resolution, often 

fuzzy, views of the far side). All of these accomplishments were major achievements 

in exploration. 

Now, with the genesis of the LOIRP, NASA is able to rejuvenate those images. By 

reading data from the original downlink tapes, the LOIRP team has demonstrated 

the ability to improve the resolution of the photos by a factor of two or three. 

This achievement is truly amazing and will enable new science to be extracted 

from these images obtained four decades ago. The project will directly contribute 

to NASA’s Constellation Program of landing men and women on the Moon. By 

comparing detailed images of the Moon taken 42–43 years ago with new images 

taken by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, to be launched in June 2009, NASA 

will be able to calculate the rate of formation of new craters on the Moon. This 

information can then be used to determine the level of hazard from meteorites 

astronauts will face on the lunar surface. Therefore, in some ways, the LOIRP is a 

“new” mission to the Moon. 

In addition to science, the effort to rejuvenate these images also performs a more 

sublime task, the preservation of history. In addition to producing humanity’s frst 

global map of its neighboring world, the lunar orbiters also recorded the frst images


of Earth as viewed from the vicinity of the Moon (one example is shown in the previous 

edition of this newsletter). The images need to be preserved in all of their glory 

for the sake of future generations. 

The NASA History Division can be justifably proud of its contribution to this 

effort. It is no exaggeration to state that its role was absolutely critical to today’s 

rescue of the lunar orbiter images. By preserving history, the members of that offce 

have enabled new history to be made. 

aPollo 40th-anniversary events 

The KSC Visitors Center will host Apollo 11 40th-anniversary activities on 16 July 2009. 

NASA Headquarters will host an Apollo 40th Anniversary History Symposium on 

16 July 2009, which will be featured on NASA TV. Please see http://www.nasa.gov/ 

multimedia/nasatv/index.html for schedule and streaming video. 

The Annual John H. Glenn Memorial Lecture at the National Air and Space 

Museum in Washington, DC, will feature the Apollo 11 crew and former NASA 

fight director Chris Kraft on 19 July 2009. Please see http://www.nasm.si.edu/events/ 

eventDetail.cfm?eventID=1378 for details. 

The Newseum will have an afternoon event featuring the Apollo 11 crew on 20 July 2009. 

The National Air and Space Museum will host an evening reception for the Apollo 

11 crew and other Apollo astronauts on 20 July 2009. 

The NASA Field Centers will host First Footprints Celebrations to commemorate 

the Apollo 11 landing on the Moon on 20 July 2009. 

The U.S. Space & Rocket Center in Huntsville, Alabama, will host a First Footprints 

Celebration to commemorate the Apollo 11 landing on the Moon on 20 July 2009. 

The Apollo 11 crew will be presented with the Congressional Gold Medal in 

Washington, DC, on 21 July 2009. 

The Second Annual Von Braun Memorial Symposium from 21 to 22 October 2009 

in Huntsville, Alabama, will feature an Apollo 40th-anniversary theme. Please see 

http://astronautical.org/events/ for more details. 

The Virginia Air and Space Museum will host an event commemorating the Apollo 

12 40th anniversary on 14 November 2009. 

Online Resources 

http://www.nasa.gov/apollo40th 

This offcial NASA site commemorates the 40th anniversary of the Apollo program 

with a comprehensive collection of images, audio, source documents, and interactive 

media. As new material will continue to be added through 2012 to correspond to 

each mission’s anniversary, this site is a valuable resource for primary materials and 

refective pieces on the program’s signifcance. 

49


50 

nasa history Program review 

By Glenn Bugos, Historian, Ames Research Center 

The Ames Research Center (ARC) hosted the 2009 NASA History Program Review 

from 28 to 30 April. Thirty-fve people, from the NASA Centers and Headquarters, 

as well as history afcionados from ARC and the Bay Area, gathered to discuss their 

progress over the past year and review what is state-of-the-art in NASA history programs. 

Yvonne Pendelton, Deputy Associate Center Director, welcomed the group 

to ARC, highlighting how the history of the Center is a vital part of its current institutional 

culture. She concluded by saying she hoped every Center had a Jack Boyd, 

someone who can lend a historical perspective to any discussion on Center goals. 

Jack then delighted us with his unique perspective on the history of the Center, flled 

with photographs and anecdotes about his long career. 

Steve Dick reviewed the work of his offce, organized according to how it satisfed 

NASA’s strategic plan goals for history. He seemed especially proud of the success 

of his societal impact studies and his fagship series of books: the Chertok memoirs, 

the Exploring the Unknown compendiums, and the historical data books. The activities 

surrounding the 50th anniversary of NASA made for an especially busy year. 

Jane Odom reviewed their efforts in archives, which included a furry of activity in 

acquisitions, processing, and research support. Steve Garber reviewed the status of 

the many books in progress, 46 in total. Historians and archivists from each of the 

Centers then gave an update of their progress over the past year, which refected 

both the diversity of the issues they confront and their common concerns. 

Wednesday morning was devoted to presentations about images and audio archives. 

Jon Hornstein introduced us to NASAimages.org, an effort of the Internet Archives 

to eventually present every NASA image. Megan Prelinger gave a visually stunning 

presentation of her book-in-progress on aerospace advertising imagery in the 1950s. 

April Gage reviewed her progress in curating the art program at ARC, and Sandra 

Johnson at Johnson Space Center gave a compelling overview of the challenges of 

preserving audio history. Walter Vincenti, who in 1940 was the fourth engineer hired 

at ARC an who eventually became an eminent professor and historian of technology 

at Stanford, presented a biography of William Durand and his role in making 

American engineering more mathematically driven. 

Through various tours, ARC employees welcomed the group to see history being 

made. Within walking distance of the meeting rooms, we took tours of the ARC 

Aerospace Encounter, the Moffett Field Museum, and the Small Sats test facility 

(N45). On Wednesday afternoon, we loaded a bus for more extensive touring: the 

Aerospace Automation Laboratory, the Lunar Orbiter Image Recovery Project, 

the Arc Jet facility, the hyperwall of the NASA Advanced Supercomputing Facility, 

the 80-by-120-foot test section of the National Full Scale Aerodynamics Facility, 

and the Vertical Motion Simulator. The group dinner on Wednesday night featured 

toasts to Steven Dick, who announced that he would be retiring soon after the 

celebration of the 40th anniversary celebrations for Apollo 11. 

Thursday morning was devoted to special topics. Douglas Vakoch of the Search for 

Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) Institute spoke on historical analogues for SETI 

and astrobiology, Ken Souza of ARC presented a fascinating history of gravitational


biology, and Carl Pilcher spoke on the history of the NASA Astrobiology Institute. 

Tiffany Montague of Google spoke on their various space initiatives, including 

a demonstration of the newest release of Google Earth. Michael Meltzer gave an 

overview of his work on the history of the Cassini project. For those with the energy 

to explore even more, on Thursday afternoon we were treated to tours of historic 

Hangar One, of the Computer History Museum, and of the Hoover Institution 

Archives at Stanford University. 

The 2010 meeting is tentatively scheduled to convene at Kennedy Space Center. 

2009 nasa history award 

goes to erik m. Conway 

For his pathbreaking work on space history, ranging 

from aeronautics to Earth and space science, 

JPL historian Erik Conway was awarded the 

2009 NASA Headquarters History Award. Chief 

Historian Steven Dick presented the award to Erik 

on 28 April at NASA’s Annual History Review, 

held this year at Ames Research Center. Before 

coming to JPL, Erik worked as a contract historian 

at Langley Research Center. Although Erik has 

published many articles in scholarly journals, he is 

perhaps best known for his two most recent books. 

High-Speed Dreams: NASA and the Technopolitics 

of Supersonic Transportation, 1945–1999 (2005) is 

a sophisticated study of politics, economics, and 

nationalism in the context of a complex technological 

enterprise, while Atmospheric Science at 

NASA: A History (2008) is a revealing account of 

NASA’s sometimes contentious role in understanding 

Earth’s atmosphere, in part through studying 

planetary atmospheres and Earth itself from 

space. Both books appeared in the New Series 

in NASA History, published by Johns Hopkins 

University Press. Erik’s current research centers 

on robotic Mars exploration; he is analyzing the 

changing policies on project management and 

planetary science. Throughout these publications 

and his research career, Erik has focused on the 

historical interaction between national politics, 

scientifc research, and technological change. 

Presentation of award to Erik Conway (left) by Steve Dick. 

In addition to research and writing, as JPL historian, 

Erik’s duties include conducting oral histories and contributing to the Lab’s 

historical collections. His work is a credit to the strong history program that NASA 

has maintained now for 50 years. Congratulations, Erik! 

51


52 

Photos From the nasa history 

Program review, held at nasa 

ames, 28–30 aPril 2009 

“Hyperwall” at Ames Research Center’s supercomputing facility.

NASA and contractor historians and archivists at the Program Review. Front row (left 

to right): Peter Merlin, Steven Dick, John Hargenrader, Colin Fries, Jane Odom, and 

Douglas Mudgway. Second row (left to right): Christian Gelzer, Erik Blackburn, April 

Gage, Elaine Liston, Rebecca Wright, and Anne Power. Third row (left to right): Glenn 

Bugos, Tracy McMahan-Mayhan, Robert Arrighi, Jennifer Ross-Nazzal, Erik Conway, 

Sandra Johnson, Courtney Thomas, Steve Garber, and Gail Langevin. 

Exhibit in Hangar One on the history of dirigibles at NASA Ames. 



53


54 

Photos from the NASA History Program Review, Held at NASA Ames, 28–30 April 2009 (continued) 

NASA Chief Archivist Jane Odom and NASA Chief Historian 

Steve Dick in Hangar One at ARC. 

Kennedy Space Center archivist Elaine Liston (left) and 

Marshall Space Flight Center history point of contact Tracy 

McMahan-Mayhan in Hangar One at ARC. 

NASA Headquarters archivist Colin Fries (left) and historian 

Stephen Garber in Hangar One at ARC.

NASA Chief Archivist Jane Odom (left) with Glenn Research 

Center archivist Robert Arrighi and GRC history offcer Anne 

Power in Hangar One at ARC. 

Kennedy Space Center archivist Elaine Liston and NASA 

Chief Historian Steven Dick in Hangar One at ARC. 

Jack Boyd (right) introducing Walter Vincenti, both of whom 

spoke about the history of ARC at the Program Review. 



55


56 

Photos from the NASA History Program Review, Held at NASA Ames, 28–30 April 2009 (continued) 

Bell Tower near Stanford University’s Hoover Institute. 

NASA Chief Historian Steven Dick (left), NASA Chief Archivist Jane Odom, Kennedy Space Center 

archivist Elaine Liston, and author Douglas Mudgway prepare to go on a tour of ARC.



Korolev, particularly his last days, gives westerners an unprecedented perspective into 

the life of one of the most important scientifc managers in the 20th century. 

Although Korolev is squarely central in Chertok’s narrative, the author offers a 

much more nuanced perspective of the Soviet space program, one that includes a 

panoply of other characters, from top Communist Party offcials who managed the 

projects to junior engineers who produced many of the technical innovations. One 

marvels at his memory—Chertok is able to remember a vast assortment of names 

of people present at important managerial meetings. Much of this detail is derived 

from notes made in his contemporaneous diaries from the 1960s and 1970s (the origi 

nals of which have since been donated for storage to the archives of the National Air 

and Space Museum in Washington, DC). The chapters in volume 3 also highlight 

his ability to bring to life previously unknown or lesser known individuals in the 

history of the Soviet space program. For example, in chapter 15, on the development 

of the frst Soviet communications satellite, Molniya-1, we fnd touching profles of 

brilliant engineers such as 27-year-old Vyacheslav Dudnikov, the principal person 

age behind the design of the satellite, and Murad Kaplanov, the descendent of a 

royal family of Kumyks, an ethnic minority in the Soviet republic of Dagestan, who 

designed Molniya’s payload. Other, more powerful luminaries in the Soviet space 

program, such as the gifted but irascible Vasiliy Mishin, who succeeded Sergey 

Korolev in 1966, are humanized in a manner that contrasts starkly with the wooden 

depictions of Soviet space personalities so common in western narratives. 

Chertok does not shy away from his obviously high evaluation of scientists and 

engineers. Like many of his generation, i.e., those that came of age in the 1930s and 

went on to leading industrial and government positions after World War II, his 

faith in the power of science and technology to solve the world’s problems remains 

undiminished. In this technocratic view of the ideal human society, Chertok sees 

a prominent and positive role for scientists and engineers in the functioning of an 

advanced society. The problems with science and technology are not with those 

who produce them but rather those—especially politicians and bureaucrats—who 

use them. It’s not surprising that Chertok’s account of Minister of Defense Rodion 

Malinovskiy’s visit to Baykonur is scathing; he recalls how the minister had little 

interest in learning anything about the technology at the launch site, waving away a 

colonel’s report by saying, “I don’t need you to tell me what’s what. You already take 

me for a complete fool. Instead, why don’t you tell me where the latrine is around 

here” (chapter 12, p. 353). 

The richness of Chertok’s writing should not obscure the fact that this is a memoir 

written by a historical participant, not a tome authored by a professional historian. 

In other words, the opinions presented here are by defnition subjective and thus 

prone to the same kinds of limitations inherent in any recollection, especially 

one made over four decades after the events. Partly as a corrective to his own fal 

libilities, Chertok does an excellent job of using supporting evidence to buttress 

his impressions. For example, he makes liberal use of recently published material 

in the Russian press, such as primary documents published in various books or 

groundbreaking articles by Russian journalists who have uncovered previously 

unknown aspects of the Soviet space program. Similarly, since the publication of 

the frst edition in the 1990s, a number of direct participants of space-related events 

have offered Chertok their own impressions, which he has generously reproduced at 

various points in the narrative. A recent landmark collection of original government 


57


58 


documents on the early history of the Soviet space program appeared too late for 

Chertok to use in these memoirs, but future historians will fnd it useful to juxtapose 

Chertok’s accounts with the evidence from these primary documents. 3 

It has been my great fortune to meet with Academician Chertok several times 

since this project got off the ground. Chertok, who is now a sprightly 97 years old, 

continues to speak passionately and emphatically about his life’s work and remains 

justifably proud of the achievements of the Russian space program. After our last 

meeting, I was reminded of something that Chertok had said in one of his very 

frst public interviews in 1987. In describing the contradictions of Sergey Korolev’s 

personality, Chertok had noted: “This realist, this calculating, [and] farsighted 

individual was, in his soul, an incorrigible romantic.” 4 Such a description would also 

be an apt encapsulation of the contradictions of the entire Soviet drive to explore 

space, one which was characterized by equal amounts of hard-headed realism and 

romantic idealism. Academician Boris Yevseyevich Chertok has communicated 

that idea very capably in his memoirs, and it is my hope that we have managed to 

do justice to his own vision by bringing that story to an English-speaking audience. 

3. Yu. M. Baturin, ed., Sovetskaya kosmicheskaya initsiativa i gosudarstvennykh dokumentakh, 1946– 

1964 gg. [Soviet Space Initiatives in State Documents, 1946–1964] (Moscow: RTSoft, 2008). 

4. Konovalov, “Ryvok k zvezdam.”


The NASA History Division, under the Office of External Relations, NASA 

Headquarters, Washington, DC 20546, publishes News and Notes quarterly. 

To receive News and Notes via e-mail, send a message to history-request@hq.nasa. 

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Do you have more questions about NASA history in general? Please check out 

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We also welcome comments about the content and format of this newsletter. Please 

send comments to Steve Garber, newsletter editor, at stephen.j.garber@nasa.gov. 

NASA Headquarters History Division Staff Contact Information: 

Steven J. Dick, Chief Historian steven.j.dick@nasa.gov 

202-358-0383 

Nadine Andreassen, Program Support Specialist nadine.j.andreassen@nasa.gov 

202-358-0087 

Colin Fries, Archivist cfries@mail.hq.nasa.gov 

202-358-0388 

Stephen Garber, Historian stephen.j.garber@nasa.gov 

202-358-0385 

John Hargenrader, Archivist jhargenr@mail.hq.nasa.gov 

202-358-0387 

Jane Odom, Chief Archivist jane.h.odom@nasa.gov 

202-358-0386 

Elizabeth Suckow, Archivist elizabeth.suckow-1@nasa.gov 

202-358-0375 

Created and produced by the following: 

Steve Garber, NASA Headquarters History Division 

Stacie Dapoz, Editor, NASA Headquarters Communications Support Services Center 

Chris Yates, Senior Graphic Designer, NASA Headquarters Communications Support Services Center 

Hanta Ralay, Printing Specialist, NASA Headquarters Communications Support Services Center 

Trenita Williams, Mail Coordinator, NASA Headquarters Mail Room 

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59

National Aeronautics and 

Space Administration 

NASA HISTORY DIVISION 

Offce of External Relations 

Washington, DC 20546 

http://www.nasa.gov 

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